Six Staffers at Trump Rally in Tulsa Test Positive for Covid-19

(Bloomberg) -- Six members of President Donald Trump’s advance team for his rally in Tulsa have tested positive for Covid-19, his campaign announced Saturday.

The campaign said that the six people who tested positive “out of hundreds of tests performed” would be quarantined and would not attend the rally.

Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign communications director, added in a statement that all attendees will have their temperatures taken upon arrival, “at which point they are given wristbands, facemasks and hand sanitizer.”

“No Covid-positive staffers or anyone in immediate contact will be at today’s rally or near attendees and elected officials,” Murtaugh said.

Worry has run high that the indoor rally -- in an arena with a 19,000-person capacity -- may become a coronavirus superspreader event. Residents who sued to stop the rally on health grounds were overruled on Friday by the Oklahoma Supreme Court.

Organizers have demanded that attendees sign a waiver absolving the Trump campaign of liability if they get sick.

Tulsa was chosen for Saturday’s rally, in part, because its Republican governor was one of the most aggressive in easing lockdowns, consistent with Trump’s wish to put the pandemic in the rear-view mirror and rebuild the economy.

While states that have been at the epicenter of the epidemic, like New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, have seen their new cases fall away, the incidence of the virus in Oklahoma is rising. Cases in the state have passed 10,000, with Tulsa county having the most.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.