WASHINGTON D.C. (KUSI) – Quadruple vaccinated First Lady Jill Biden tested positive on Monday and is reportedly experiencing “mild symptoms.”
President Joe Biden tested negative, but the White House announced Tuesday that he has again started to wear a mask indoors.
This smells a lot like 2020 here. It seems like the groundwork for the election lockdowns is being laid.
WATCH Trump’s reply to pending mandates:
During Tuesday’s press briefing, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre explained, “as far as the steps he (Joe Biden) is taking, the president was with the First Lady yesterday. He will be masking while indoors and around people. In alignment with CDC guidance, as has been the practice of the past, the president will remove his mask when sufficiently distanced from others indoors and while outside as well.”
Jill Biden will remain at the couple’s home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, for the time being, communications director Elizabeth Alexander said. The first lady had planned to start the new school year Tuesday at Northern Virginia Community College, where she teaches English and writing.
Due to her condition, she was working with school officials to arrange substitute teachers for her classes, Alexander said.
The first lady had traveled with her husband to Florida on Saturday to inspect the damage from Hurricane Idalia. President Biden then spent part of the Labor Day weekend at the Delaware beach house before traveling Monday to a union event in Philadelphia and then back to the White House.
The Bidens both contracted COVID previously, last summer.
Following President Joe Biden’s remarks on Friday that he plans to request funding for a new COVID vaccine amid rising cases in this country, doctors are sharing their input on whether another version is needed.
“I signed off this morning on a proposal we have to present to the Congress a request for additional funding for a new vaccine that is necessary, that works,” Biden told reporters during his vacation in Lake Tahoe.
“It will likely be recommended that everybody get it no matter whether they’ve gotten it before or not,” he also said.
The president’s comments came as the CDC is reporting that COVID-related hospitalizations have risen 21.6% in the most recent week and that deaths have risen 21.4%.
The numbers are still far below the levels seen during the pandemic, however.
Dr. Marc Siegel, a professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center and a Fox News medical contributor, said it is “impossible to know what [Biden] is referring to” in his comment.
“There is a new MRNA shot to cover the XBB variant that will also cover the rapidly spreading EG.5 subvariant that descended from it, which will be out in mid-September,” Siegel told Fox News Digital.
“As far as I know, there are no plans to mandate it.”
The CDC has told Siegel that it will target high-risk groups with the new vaccine, he said. Siegel added that the U.S. could benefit from a vaccine that is “more universal or covers all variants” — or one that creates a nasal barrier.
“Several of these are being studied, and would do a much better job at decreasing or stopping transmission, but as far as I know, none are ready for approval,” Siegel said.
“Perhaps [Biden] means that he will be asking Congress for more funding to pursue these vaccines — but how can you talk about mandating something that hasn’t been developed?” he also said.
The vaccines that are currently authorized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) include Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines (mRNA vaccines) and the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine (a protein subunit vaccine).
