On Saturday, at the medical press conference on President Donald Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis, the president's doctor suggested that it has been 72 hours since the president received his positive test result — suggesting the White House knew he was sick for a while before the public did, and the president may even have been at public events between receiving the result and the public's notification.
On CNN, White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins broke down the significance of this discrepancy.
"It brought us all to attention when we heard 72 hours," said anchor Fredericka Whitfield. "I mean, this timeline now is not making any sense. And was that an error that the doctor made? Or is this revealing about when indeed they had a positive test of COVID for the president?"
"It would be really concerning if the president's doctor had an error with the president's timeline of when he diagnosed," said Collins. "We're going to side with the doctor, who said it's been 72 hours since he was diagnosed and 48 hours since he started the experimental treatment, the antibody cocktail we were talking about yesterday. Both of those are before we even knew the president tested positive for coronavirus because that's only about 36 hours since we found that out ... if he was diagnosed with coronavirus 72 hours ago and yet continued on with his normal schedule and went to a fundraiser in New Jersey, knowing that he had coronavirus, which if you are going on what his own physician is saying, that is the timeline that matches up, that is a stunning statement that we just got from the physician."
"I don't know if it was inadvertent, if he didn't know when we found out the president had coronavirus," added Collins. "But he is saying that the president tested positive around the same time, or that's when they learned. So it's going to raise massive questions about why, if the president tested positive for coronavirus 72 hours ago and we only found out about it 36 hours ago, and nobody has felt the need to clear that up, it's going to raise major questions about everything we know about what's been happening here in the last few days at the White House and the president's health."
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