Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Tina Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Press secretary JEN PSAKI made news today when she told reporters that there have been multiple positive Covid-19 cases among White House staffers, despite being vaccinated. It wasn’t just news to the reporters, however. Many White House staffers also found out about the “breakthrough cases,” as Psaki called them, from her press briefing today. The White House does not notify all the people who work in the building when there is a positive test, believing that contract tracing is sufficient, according to people familiar with the disclosure process. The White House’s standard for publicly disclosing cases also is limited. Going back to the transition, the White House only discloses positive cases when the person is a “commissioned officer” — those staffers who have “assistant to the president,” “deputy assistant to the president,” or “special assistant to the president” in their title. Psaki confirmed today that that policy remains in place. Of the 524 staffers in the White House, only 138 carry such titles, meaning that the White House does not disclose positive cases for about three-quarters of the staff. Not all senior White House officials are commissioned officers. Senior advisers ANITA DUNN and NEERA TANDEN , for example, do not fall into this category, nor does American Rescue Plan coordinator GENE SPERLING. The White House declined to comment on why they haven’t expanded their disclosures of staffers who contract the virus or the number of other staffers who recently tested positive. The White House also declined to comment on whether there had been transmission between staffers in past cases. But there is a sense inside the White House that the high levels of vaccination among staff make Covid breakthrough cases far less problematic events and should be treated as such. A White House official did, however, tell West Wing Playbook that staff followed Center for Disease Control and Prevention guidance, asking those not vaccinated to wear masks. The official also noted that all Executive Office of the President staff had been offered the vaccine and that the White House conducts regular testing. The “testing cadence depends on proximity to principals, vaccination status, and other factors informed by public health and medical experts,” the official said. The renewed scrutiny on the White House’s protocols come as the highly contagious delta variant moves across the United States and as vaccine skeptics question the ability of the vaccines to slow its spread. While vaccines do not provide 100 percent immunity from catching the virus, they have proven extremely effective at slowing transmission and making the symptoms milder for those who do catch Covid-19. On Tuesday, the administration said that unvaccinated Americans now make up 99.5 percent of recent Covid deaths. Administration officials were piqued that the questions during Tuesday’s briefing seemed to raise doubts about the efficacy of vaccines when the breakthrough cases, instead, showed the value of the vaccine in ensuring that those cases weren’t serious or life-threatening. Psaki told reporters that staffers are “regularly tested either once a week or more depending on their proximity to principals.” Curiously, the president is tested less often than his staff — only once every two weeks, according to Psaki. Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you in touch with the White House? Are you NOE GONZALEZ? We want to hear from you — and we’ll keep you anonymous: westwingtips@politico.com. Or if you want to stay really anonymous send us a tip through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram, or Whatsapp here. |