Vice President Kamala Harris Tests Positive for Covid-19

Vice President Kamala Harris tested positive for the coronavirus on Tuesday, according to her office. Harris was not showing any symptoms and hasn’t been in close contact with the president or the first lady, her office said.​

Harris becomes the latest highest-ranking official in Washington to be infected and has raised new concerns about President Biden’s potential exposure as the virus tears through his administration. Biden has so far avoided the virus, even after coming into close proximity with numerous government officials who later tested positive.

Harris, 57, “Will isolate and continue to work from the Vice President’s residence,” her press secretary, Kirsten Allen, said in a statement. Harris tested positive for Covid on both rapid and PCR tests, and will return to the White House when she tests negative.

Allen also said in her statement, “Harris is not considered a close contact to Biden or first lady Jill Biden due to their respective recent travel schedules.”

The vice president is the first in line of presidential succession, is fully vaccinated against Covid, and she received her second booster shot earlier this month.

Earlier Tuesday, Democratic Senators Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Ron Wyden of Oregon announced that they had tested positive for Covid and were feeling mild symptoms.

Those test results have raised the question of whether Senate Democrats will have enough votes to confirm some nominees they had planned to consider this week.

The Senate is split 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats, giving Harris the tie-breaking vote. She has wielded that power 17 times, the most of any vice president since Schuyler Colfax of the Ulysses S. Grant administration, that ended in 1873.