Harris to return to campaign trail Monday for first time since aide tests positive for COVID-19

Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris will hit the campaign trail Monday for the first time since her travel was suspended this week after an aide tested positive for the coronavirus. 

The campaign said Harris will travel to Orlando and Jacksonville, Fla., for the first day of in-person early voting in the Sunshine State, a crucial battleground where polls show a neck-and-neck race in the final sprint to Election Day.

Harris will be holding her first in-person campaign event since two staffers on Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, including Harris’s communications director, tested positive for the coronavirus.

Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said Thursday that neither infected individual was in close contact, as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with Harris or Biden but that Harris’s travel would be canceled through Sunday out of an abundance of caution.

“Regardless, out of an abundance of caution and in line with our campaign’s commitment to the highest levels of precaution, we are canceling Senator Harris’s travel through Sunday, October 18th, but she will keep a robust and aggressive schedule of virtual campaign activities to reach voters all across the country during this time,” Dillon said in a statement Thursday morning. 

Dillon also credited the campaign’s “rigorous protocols and testing” for catching the positive tests. 

The Biden campaign has sought to pose a stark contrast with President Trump over its handling of the virus, ensuring that staffers and Biden and Harris wear masks when they are around other people and hitting Trump over his lax stance on face coverings and his handling of the virus overall. 

Harris last underwent PCR testing for the coronavirus Friday. The virus was not detected.