Trump's top security aide gets coronavirus

WASHINGTON－Robert O'Brien, the national security adviser to US President Donald Trump, has tested positive for COVID-19, the White House said on Monday.

"He has mild symptoms and has been self-isolating and working from a secure location off site," the White House said in a statement. "There is no risk of exposure to the president or the vice-president."

The diagnosis has made O'Brien, a top aide to Trump, the highest ranking White House official known to have tested positive for the virus, which has infected more than 4.2 million people and killed more than 145,000 in the United States.

Speaking to reporters at the White House before a trip to North Carolina on Monday afternoon, Trump said he hasn't seen O'Brien lately.

"I heard he tested. Yeah. I have not seen him. I'm calling him later," said Trump, adding that he didn't know when his fourth national security adviser first tested positive.

The White House's announcement on O'Brien came shortly after multiple US media outlets broke the news on Monday morning.

O'Brien, 54, has been out of the office since late last week, Bloomberg News reported. He left his office in the White House last Thursday, CNN reported.

O'Brien reportedly came down with coronavirus after a family event and has been isolating at home while still running the National Security Council, or NSC, doing most of his work by phone.

Part of the executive office of the president, the NSC advises on national security and foreign policy. The national security adviser's office is just a few steps away from the Oval Office, the formal workspace of presidents.

O'Brien, whom Trump tapped to lead the agency in September 2019 after the ousting of John Bolton, recently returned from Europe, where he met with officials from the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy. Multiple photos released from the trip showed that O'Brien had neither practiced social distancing nor worn a mask.

The White House recently ended regular temperature checks for all those entering the White House complex, but those who will come into close contact with Trump are still given rapid tests.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said last week that Trump tested "often".

Last week, a cafeteria employee working in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which is close to the White House, tested positive for the coronavirus, as did a US Marine assigned to Trump's helicopter squadron ahead of the president's planned trip to his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

Earlier, one of Trump's military valets and Vice-President Mike Pence's press secretary tested positive for the virus.

$1 trillion package

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans on Monday proposed a $1 trillion coronavirus aid package hammered out with the White House, paving the way for talks with Democrats on how to help the public as expanded unemployment benefits for millions of workers expire this week.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called the proposal a "tailored and targeted" plan focused on getting children back to school and employees back to work and protecting corporations from lawsuits, while slashing the expiring supplemental unemployment benefits of $600 a week by two-thirds.

The plan sparked immediate opposition from both Democrats and Republicans. Democrats decried it as too limited compared to their $3 trillion proposal that passed the House of Representatives in May, while some Republicans called it too expensive.

Xinhua - Agencies