Donald Trump joins growing list of world leaders to contract Covid

Donald Trump’s positive Covid-19 diagnosis makes him one of more than a dozen world leaders and high-profile politicians to have contracted the virus.

Coronavirus live news: Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, test positive for Covid-19

Read more

The US president announced early on Friday, just one month before the election, that he and the first lady, Melania, had contracted the virus, following reports that one of his closest advisers, Hope Hicks, had also tested positive. Hicks had accompanied him to the debate with Joe Biden on Tuesday and a campaign rally on Wednesday.

Trump, who has repeatedly mocked his Democratic opponent for wearing masks, is not the first major elected official to become infected after downplaying the seriousness of the virus.

On 27 March, the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, became one of the first world leaders to announce he had the virus. He was eventually admitted to hospital and treated in the intensive care unit.

Before his diagnosis, he was criticised for understating the threat of the virus and at one point early in the outbreak he boasted of shaking hands “with everybody” at a hospital with Covid patients.

Play Video

0:41

‘I shook hands with everybody,’ says Boris Johnson weeks before coronavirus diagnosis – video

On 7 July, Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, who had repeatedly trivialised the pandemic, announced on live television he had tested positive. As the Covid crisis worsened earlier in the summer, he had boasted that he wasn’t worried about getting sick, saying his “athlete’s background” would help him stay strong if he became infected.

When he announced his diagnosis to reporters, Bolsonaro removed his mask and smiled, saying: “Just look at my face. I’m well, fine, thank God.”

Earlier in the pandemic, Monaco’s Prince Albert II tested positive, as did Prince Charles in the UK. The Russian prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, temporarily stepped down in April after contracting Covid. That same week, Guinea-Bissau’s prime minister, Nuno Gomes Nabiam, tested positive alongside three members of his cabinet.

Bolivia’s president, Jeanine Añez, announced her positive Covid diagnosis on 10 July, and government officials confirmed that at least seven ministers, including the health minister, had also tested positive. Juan Orlando Hernandez, the president of Honduras, tested positive on 16 June.

Other international leaders who have contracted Covid include the Armenian prime minister, the Philippine interior secretary, the Venezuelan oil minister, Ghana’s health minister, South Sudan’s vice-president, Pakistan’s parliament speaker, Spain’s deputy prime minister, the European Union’s chief Brexit negotiator, Australia’s home affairs minister, the Iranian vice-president and Poland’s environment minister.

In the US, two senators and more than a dozen members of Congress have also contracted Covid. Last month, Missouri’s Republican governor, Mike Parson, who has staunchly opposed mask mandates, tested positive. Herman Cain, a 2012 Republican presidential candidate and Trump supporter, died of coronavirus in July. He was admitted to hospital two weeks after attending the president’s campaign rally.

Hours before he tweeted about his positive test, Trump repeated his unsubstantiated refrain that the pandemic would soon end: “I just want to say that the end of the pandemic is in sight.”