Trump uses Barron’s COVID-19 diagnosis to push for reopening schools. ‘He’s free’
President Donald Trump invoked his teenage son’s COVID-19 diagnosis at a rally on Wednesday to push for reopening schools during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Barron Trump, he had the corona 19,” Trump said at the rally in Des Moines, Iowa. “He had it for such a short period of time I don’t even think he knew he had it because they’re young and their immune systems are strong and they fight it off 99.9 percent, and Barron is beautiful and he’s free.”
“It happens. People have it, and it goes. Get the kids back to school. We’ve got to get them back to school,” the president told the crowd.
First lady Melania Trump said Wednesday that 14-year-old Barron tested positive for coronavirus but didn’t have symptoms and has since tested negative.
“Luckily he is a strong teenager and exhibited no symptoms,” she said in a White House statement. “In one way I was glad the three of us went through this at the same time so we could take care of one another and spend time together.”
Barron’s school, St. Andrew’s Episcopal School, implemented a remote learning-only plan through Oct. 9 for kindergarten through grade 12, the head of school wrote in a letter. Barron has attended the Maryland private school since 2017 and started ninth grade this fall, according to CNN.
As COVID-19 cases began to climb over the summer, Trump has pushed for months to reopen schools amid a struggling economy. “SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!” he tweeted on July 6.
Rising cases have pushed schools to remote learning, and nearly half of the country’s children will be learning virtually instead of in-person this fall, The New York Times reported.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released guidelines in July favoring reopening schools.
The guidelines said children are less likely to be impacted by severe symptoms of COVID-19 than adults.
“Children appear to be at lower risk for contracting COVID-19 compared to adults. To put this in perspective, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as of July 17, 2020, the United States reported that children and adolescents under 18 years old account for under 7 percent of COVID-19 cases and less than 0.1 percent of COVID-19-related deaths,” the guidelines state.
“Scientific studies suggest that COVID-19 transmission among children in schools may be low. International studies that have assessed how readily COVID-19 spreads in schools also reveal low rates of transmission when community transmission is low” it said.
The guidance offer several ways to help reduce the spread of COVID-19, including keeping kids in pods, using social distancing, face masks, and frequent hand washing, as well as incorporating these measures in the curriculum.
There are more than 7.9 million confirmed coronavirus cases, and more than 216,000 people have died from the virus in the U.S. as of Oct. 15, according to Johns Hopkins University.
This story was originally published October 15, 2020 at 9:13 AM with the headline "Trump uses Barron’s COVID-19 diagnosis to push for reopening schools. ‘He’s free’."