Trump says he wants to kiss rally attendees after COVID-19 diagnosis

• President Donald Trump at his first rally since being diagnosed with COVID-19 said he felt “powerful” and wanted to “kiss” supporters in the audience.
• The packed rally was his first since announcing on October 2 that he had tested positive for COVID-19.
• Trump’s personal physician, Dr Sean Conley, has said the president is no longer infectious, and that he tested negative for the virus on two consecutive days.
• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

President Donald Trump said he wanted to “kiss everyone” in the audience as he returned to the campaign trail at a packed Florida rally Monday night.

Trump told supporters Monday that he felt “so powerful,” a week after being released from hospital in Washington DC, where he was treated for the illness.

The event was held outside, though few supporters were photographed wearing masks and most were packed closely together, in violation of social distancing guidelines.

“I went through it,” Trump said. “Now they say I’m immune. I feel so powerful I’ll walk into that audience.”

(Trump’s claim of immunity is not supported by science.)

He continued: “I’ll walk in there, I’ll kiss everyone in that audience. I’ll kiss the guys and the beautiful women and the — I’ll just give you a big fat kiss.”

Trump’s appearance at the rally came hours after his personal physician, Dr Sean Conley, announced that Trump had tested negative for the coronavirus on two consecutive days and was no longer infectious.

—Eric Topol (@EricTopol) October 11, 2020

It was the first time the president’s test results for the virus had been revealed since he said he tested positive on October 2.

Under Centers of Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, those who test positive are urged to isolate for 10 days, advice which the president did not follow.

In his memo, Conley did not say when the negative tests had been taken.

The test which Conley said had been used to establish whether the president is infected — the Abbott BinaxNOW test — was given emergency clearance by the Food and Drugs Administration to be used “within the first seven days of the onset of symptoms.”

The tests, which produce a result rapidly, are found to more frequently misdiagnose than the PCR tests, in which test results are established in a laboratory, according to the MIT Technology Review.

Conley said the tests were taken “in context with additional clinical and laboratory data.”

The White House earlier refused several times to disclose when Trump had last tested negative for the disease. This would have revealed how many people Trump may have exposed to the disease when infected.

Dr Anthony Fauci, a key member of the White House coronavirus task force, on Monday warned in an interview with CNN that holding mass rallies was “asking for trouble” as cases again surged in many states.