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President Donald Trump wears a face mask as he tours a medical lab on July 27, 2020.

JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

President Donald Trump’s administration has taken many measures to protect him from the coronavirus, according to multiple sources.

These include sanitizing campaign venues and testing of everyone due to come close to him. 

However, strict standards such as mask-wearing and temperature checks for all in the White House were phased out in late June.

The president has also attended crowded indoor rallies, after which some staffers tested positive. 

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President Donald Trump and his entourage have taken numerous measures to prevent him from contracting the coronavirus. But the recent announcement of his positive test show that the measures ultimately did not succeed.

The president’s inner circle and security staff had amped up sanitation procedures on the election campaign trail, CNN reported. 

In locations that have seen a surge in the virus, every venue Trump is to enter is inspected for signs of infection, toilets are scrubbed and sanitized, and any person who is to come into contact with him is tested, the network reported. 

There are similar measures at the White House, where staff and visitors — including reporters — are tested regularly. Work spaces were regularly deep cleaned, a spokesperson told The Independent in July.

Other measures include use of hand sanitizer and regular deep cleaning of all work spaces, the spokesman said.

Trump noted in May that people are tested “depending on what portion of the Oval Office area they’re going in,” and that “everybody coming into the president’s office gets tested.”

In May, sources close to the president told Business Insider’s Darren Samuelsohn and Tom LoBianco that Trump was practicing social distancing and was keeping most of his meetings to the expansive Oval Office. 

“Most of the time people are 6 feet away,” the person said. “When he’s at his desk you’re 6 feet away, even if you’re in the chairs next to his desk. The Resolute desk is huge.”

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For a time the president boasted of his use of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug that he has repeatedly touted, without evidence, as a defense. Several studies have failed to show that the drug has any effect as either treatment or preventative. He later said he stopped taking it.

Effective or not, some of the standards held to protect the president have loosened in recent months. 

The White House phased out mandatory mask-wearing and temperature checks in the West Wing in late June, CNN reported. According to The Washington Post, many aides were no longer wearing masks regularly. 

In late July, Dr Jonathan Reiner, professor of medicine at The George Washington University Medical Centre, warned that lax use of masks was a danger to senior government members, according to The Independent.

Pointing to images of crowded hallways and maskless photo opportunities, he said that a “a very senior member, even higher in the government than the national security adviser will contract this virus,” if more stringent mask-wearing were not put in place. 

The president has projected a mixed message on mask-wearing. While he has endorsed their use and does wear them, has often appeared in public without one and, most recently, mocked former Vice President Joe Biden what he termed excessive use of them.

During Tuesday’s presidential election debate, Trump said he thinks masks are “ok” and that he wears one “when I think I need it.” 

But, he added: “I don’t wear a mask like [Biden], every time you see him he’s got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away from you and he’s got the biggest mask I’ve ever seen.”

Out on the election campaign trail, rigorous sanitation procedures aside, the president has still faced packed, often maskless crowds both indoors and outdoors. 

The measures, both on the campaign trail and in the White House, have not prevented infections from rearing up. 

Following Trump’s indoor rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma in mid-June, two campaign staffers tested positive and had to self-isolate.

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