President Trump said Saturday that his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was doing “very well” following his positive test for COVID-19.
A spokesperson for the president’s son confirmed on Friday that Trump Jr. tested positive “at the start of the week” and has been quarantining. News of his diagnosis came hours after Andrew Giuliani, the son of Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and a White House staffer, announced that he tested positive for the virus.
“My son is doing very well. Thank you!” Trump wrote on Twitter on Saturday.
A number of Trump administration officials and White House staffers have tested positive for COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, including the president and first lady Melania Trump in early October. Others who have tested positive include the press secretary, the chiefs of staff to both the president and the vice president, and senior advisers Stephen Miller and Hope Hicks.
The U.S. topped 12 million coronavirus cases on Saturday, less than a week after the total number of cases hit 11 million. The weekly average of new cases has exceeded 100,000 for the past two weeks, and daily case counts are now approaching 200,000.
Experts have warned that cases would surge during the winter months as people are forced to spend more time indoors, where the virus can spread more easily, and several states have stepped up coronavirus restrictions to try to limit the spread of the virus around Thanksgiving.
However, the president, his son and other allies have downplayed the extent of the outbreak. Late last month, Trump Jr. asserted that the death rate due to COVID-19 was “almost nothing.”
“We’ve gotten control of this. We understand how it works. They have the therapeutics to be able to deal with this,” he said on Fox News shortly before the election.