Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris on Thursday abruptly canceled her travel for the coming few days after two people associated with the Biden-Harris election campaign tested positive for coronavirus.
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The news came as the two men vying for the White House in the 3 November election, incumbent Republican Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden, were set to take part in separate but simultaneous town hall events to face voters’ questions on Thursday night – after their face-to-face debate was canceled when the president caught coronavirus.
Trump embarked on a frantic day of in-person campaigning on Thursday prior to the town hall evening event, and has fallen behind in the polls with less than three weeks to go, while Biden was set for a low-key day of online fundraising before his dueling event.
Then in the morning it emerged that Harris had been on a flight this week with both individuals two days before their positive Covid-19 tests. The individuals were Harris’s communications director, Liz Allen, and a “non-staff flight crew member”.
Because Harris and these contacts wore medical-grade N95 face masks during the flight and the infected individuals were not within 6ft of the vice-presidential nominee for more than 15 minutes, they do not meet the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) definition of “close contact”.
For that reason, Harris does not meet full quarantine criteria, which would normally require an individual to be in isolation for two weeks.
But “out of an abundance of caution” the campaign canceled her normal schedule of events through Sunday, while promising a “robust and aggressive” round of online campaigning intended to reach far and wide.
The individuals who tested positive were not in contact with Biden, the campaign noted. But the uncertainty created and the hiatus in in-person events for Harris was an undoubted blow to the Democratic election campaign with less than three weeks before polling day.
The Harris campaign put out a statement saying the news of the positive tests came in late on Wednesday.
Daniel Strauss
(@DanielStrauss4)
NEWS: Sen. Harris’s campaign communications director and a non staff flight member have tested positive for COVID-19.
The Biden campaign is canceling some of Harris’s planned travel. pic.twitter.com/TBme8kjFv4
October 15, 2020
It added that the California senator and vice-presidential candidate intended to return to in-person campaigning on Monday.
The campaign said that Harris last tested negative for coronavirus on Wednesday and she will be tested again.
Meanwhile, since returning from a short stay in hospital earlier this month after contracting coronavirus, Trump had hit the trail again with an energetic schedule of frequent in-person events.
He has been crisscrossing the nation in a way a campaign would normally proceed in the closing stages of an election, trying to sway uncertain voters and project images of an enthusiastic loyal base and a vigorous candidate, but which have been largely absent in 2020 during the pandemic.
In sharp contrast, Biden has only recently been doing events in person and has been relying heavily on online campaigning and huge spends on TV and social media advertising.
And unlike Trump’s packed campaign rallies, which flout federal public health advice and where attendees are largely maskless, in line with the president’s infamously dismissive rhetoric on masks and social distancing, Biden events are deliberately sparse and feature ubiquitous mask use.
On Thursday Trump was scheduled to leave the White House mid-morning and fly on Air Force One to Greenville in the vital swing state of North Carolina, where he would hold an event and give a speech at lunchtime.
He then planned to to fly to southern Florida to a fundraising event in Doral, where he has a golf resort, before completing a short journey to Miami, where he was due to be quizzed by voters in the town hall event to be broadcast on national TV network NBC and some cable stations beginning at 8pm eastern time.
In sharp contrast, Biden’s published schedule had him taking part in online fundraising efforts, presumably from his home and campaign base in Delaware, before traveling the short distance to Philadelphia, where he will appear in a rival town hall event, taking questions from voters in a session that will be broadcast on ABC, a rival national TV network to NBC.
The two men had been due to take part in the official second presidential debate on the night. But when the commission on presidential debates announced that the debate needed to be held virtually, not in person, after Trump contracted coronavirus, the president pulled out.
Biden then arranged a town hall instead, upon which, Trump decided on a rival town hall event.
Americans would then be treated to an almost literal split-screen event with the dueling town halls taking place in prime time before a nation suffering from deepening political divide and partisan animus. The main difference is that, as of Thursday afternoon, Trump’s event was due to last an hour, Biden’s 90 minutes.
NBC said on Wednesday that Clifford Lane, clinical director at the National Institutes of Health, and the government’s top infectious disease specialist, Dr Anthony Fauci, had concluded “with a high degree of confidence” that Trump was no longer “shedding infectious virus”.
A final, in-person presidential debate is still scheduled between Trump and Biden for 22 October in Nashville, Tennessee.
Trump is searching for ways to change the dynamics late in a race in which Biden has a double-digit advantage in some national polls and was shown to be 17 points ahead of the Republican in a recent Guardian/Opinium opinion poll.
This as the media and voters are very cautious about trusting polls after Trump’s shock victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
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Nearly 15 million Americans, a record for this date, have already cast ballots, in early voting, according to the US Elections Project at the University of Florida.
Many voters are seeking to avoid making their choice in person on the traditional election day rush because of concerns about coronavirus, and many are voting early in person or by mail in hopes of avoiding postal delays leading to their ballot arriving late or not being counted.
Reuters contributed reporting.
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