US President Joe Biden has tested positive for COVID-19 while on a trip to Las Vegas and is experiencing mild symptoms, the White House said.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced the positive test after the president of UnidosUS, a Latino civil rights organisation, said Biden would not be able to speak at a scheduled event due to the diagnosis.
“He is vaccinated and boosted and experiencing mild symptoms,” Jean-Pierre said.
Minutes after the announcement, the president’s motorcade was on the move from taping a radio interview in Las Vegas to the Las Vegas airport.
The president was returning to Delaware to self-isolate, the White House said.
More calls for Biden to drop his re-election bid
Meanwhile, California Representative Adam Schiff has become the highest-profile Democrat to call for Biden to drop his re-election bid.
The statement comes as the party pushes ahead with plans to hold a virtual vote to formally make Biden its nominee in the first week of August before the Democratic convention opens in person two weeks later.
Schiff is the 20th congressional Democrat to publicly urge Biden to withdraw from the presidential race.
“A second Trump presidency will undermine the very foundation of our democracy, and I have serious concerns about whether the president can defeat Donald Trump in November,” Schiff, a California Democrat who is running for the Senate, was quoted by the Los Angeles Times newspaper as saying.
Democratic concern about the 81-year-old incumbent’s ability to beat Republican challenger Trump, or to serve another four years in office, surged after Biden’s 27 June debate performance.
Trump is currently in Milwaukee where his fellow Republicans are formally nominating him as candidate, days after he narrowly escaped an assassin’s bullet at a Pennsylvania campaign stop.
Nearly two-thirds of Democrat voters say Biden should step aside and let his party nominate a different candidate, according to an AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released on Wednesday.
The findings go against Biden’s post-debate claim that “average Democrats” are still with him even if some”big names” are turning on him.
“While the choice to withdraw from the campaign is President Biden’s alone, I believe it is time for him to pass the torch,” Schiff said in a statement.
“And in doing so, secure his legacy of leadership by allowing us to defeat Donald Trump in the upcoming election.”
Schiff’s announcement comes after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries encouraged the Democratic National Convention (DNC) to delay for a week plans to hold a virtual vote to renominate Biden, which could have taken place as soon as Sunday, according to two people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The DNC’s rules committee will meet on Friday to discuss the virtual vote plans and will finalise them next week, according to a letter sent to members obtained on Wednesday by The Associated Press.
