On the heels of news that Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris had flown on a plane with two people who tested positive for COVID-19, the Biden campaign announced Thursday that someone who flew with former Vice President Joe Biden to Ohio on Monday and Florida on Tuesday has also tested positive for COVID-19, ABC News reports.
Contact tracing was used to discover the positive result after Harris’s communications director, Liz Allen, and a “non-staff flight crew member” tested positive for the coronavirus late Wednesday night.
“Around noon on Thursday, October 15th, we learned – as part of our contact tracing of the crew member on Senator Harris’s plane that tested positive for COVID last night – that an administrative member of the Aviation company that charters Vice President Biden’s aircraft tested positive for COVID-19,” Campaign Manager Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote in a statement.
“Vice President Biden was not in close contact, as defined by the CDC, with this individual at any time,” O’Malley Dillon continued. “In fact, the Vice President did not even have passing contact: this individual was over 50 feet from VP Biden at all times, entered and exited the aircraft from a rear entrance, and both the individual and the Vice President wore masks for the entire flight. Given these facts, we have been advised by the Vice President’s doctor and the campaign’s medical advisors that there is no need for the Vice President to quarantine…no additional precautions are indicated for the Vice President.”
Both Biden and Harris tested negative for COVID-19 on Thursday.