Fully vaccinated White House official tests positive for Covid-19

Washington: A fully vaccinated White House official tested positive for Covid-19 confirmed White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday.

However, it was found that the employee had no close contacts with White House principals or staffs.

Confirming earlier local media reports of the breakthrough case during Tuesday's press briefing, Psaki said:"Yesterday, a fully vaccinated White House official tested positive for Covid-19 off campus. In accordance with our rigorous Covid-19 protocols, the official remains off campus as they wait for confirmatory PCR test,"

She said that the White House medical unit has conducted contact tracing and interviews, finding no close contact among White House principals, staff or President Joe Biden, the Xinhua news agency reported.

Though there have been other instances of vaccinated employees testing positive, they were not commissioned officers and therefore were not reported by the administration.

"We committed that we would release information proactively if it is commissioned officers," she said.

Commissioned officers hold a high-level position where they work for the president, rather than working for another White House official.

A senior spokesperson for House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has also tested positive after coming into contact with Democrats from the Texas state legislature last week.

Meanwhile,Covid-19 cases are on the rise again in the US as the highly transmissible Delta variant is taking hold and vaccination efforts are stagnating in the country.

The Delta variant accounts for more than 83 per cent of Covid-19 cases in the country, said Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Tuesday.

The pace of vaccinations in the US has dropped sharply in the past few months. Twelve states have yet to vaccinate 40 per cent of their population, as per CDC data.