Study Finds Two White House Reporters Caught Close to Identical 'Rare' Strains of COVID-19

Two White House reporters caught a rare strain of COVID-19, a study found. 

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President Trump Tests Positive For Coronavirus WASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 02: White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows speaks to reporters about President Trump's positive coronavirus test outside the West Wing of the White House on October 2, 2020 in Washington, DC. President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump have both tested positive for coronavirus.

Scientists sequence the genome of a COVID-19 strain that is said to have infected President Donald Trump, dozens of his advisers, and others with whom he had close contact. 

The incident of a close to identical rare strains of the coronavirus came after the White House considered the source of President Trump's infection as "unknowable." The White House refused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) offer to contact tracing regarding the outbreak.

According to Daily Mail, two New York Times reporters who had been close to President Trump claim that they most likely caught the virus from the white House outbreak. The journalists were not convinced that the origins of the coronavirus they caught are untraceable. 

They have enlisted the help of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center geneticists to find out the lineage of the virus they caught, as per the Times.

The reporters said they had no contact with one another amid the period when they have been infected. The detected strains to them were very similar and unique for Americans, as per a preprint of the research posted to medRxiv. However, the study has not yet been peer-reviewed. 

Read also: Trump Tests Positive for COVID-19: Who Else Around the White House Are Positive, Negative? 

Dr. Trevor Bedford, a lead study author, told the Times that these viruses' mutations are somehow rare in the U.S. "I am highly convinced that these viruses come from the same outbreak or cluster based on their genomes," Bedford added.

It is likely doing the same for samples taken from the White House staff if sequencing the coronavirus strains that infected the two reporters connected their cases. The staff's contacts could also help scientists work out how many infections were a result of the outbreak and perhaps even from where the virus started. 

A dominant form thought to be more infectious than others aside from the viral strains' genetic material matched the most common one in the United States. The rare strain could have come from anywhere, as per Daily Mail.

On the other hand, the sequencing revealed mutations that belong to a different viral family. The offshoot strain was detected in Canada, the U.S., and New Zealand. 

The study author wrote, "In March and April 2020, we found that WH1 and WH2' - the names they gave the virus samples from each of the journalists - 'are descended from viruses sampled from the U.S. (Connecticut, Texas, Florida, New York, Washington), New Zealand and Canada."

Researchers noted that the reporter's viral samples had sis mutations, and these people caught had a 'sister' strain found in Virginia in August. Viruses mutate constantly, but it has still developed hundreds if not thousands of unique strains. The problem is that each journalist picked up such an individual variation of COVID-19 from a different source is low. 

According to Dr.Bradford, the strain may circulate in Washington D.C., where the journalists might have picked the rare COVID-19 separately. The two journalists' findings suggest that much could still be learned about COVID-19 strain involved in the White House superspreader event when the White House said that it was unknowable. 

After attending events associated with the White House COVID-19 outbreak, the journalists had already tested positive for the coronavirus, as per the study.

Related story: White House Outbreak Reveals the Danger of Test-Only Strategy to Prevent COVID-19 Infections