On a Saturday Night in Florida, a Party Became a Coronavirus Hot Zone

It was a lavish, festive, carefree Saturday evening at Mar-a-Lago a week ago. In the days since, the presidential estate in Florida has become something of a coronavirus hot zone. At least four Mar-a-Lago guests from last weekend have said they are infected, and others have put themselves into quarantine.

So far, neither the president nor his family has reported feeling sick or is known to have isolated themselves. After days of resisting, Trump disclosed Saturday that he had been tested overnight and was awaiting the results, without explaining why his staff had released a misleading midnight statement from the White House physician still insisting that there was no need for such a test since he had exhibited no symptoms.

But either way, the Mar-a-Lago petri dish has become a kind of metaphor for the perils of group gatherings in the age of coronavirus, demonstrating how quickly the virus can spread. No one is safe from encountering it.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., attended events at Mar-a-Lago on both Friday and Saturday nights of that first weekend in March, not realizing that he had already been exposed to someone infected with the coronavirus at an earlier political event. Only last Monday, as he rode with Trump on Air Force One back to Washington was he told of the encounter, at which point he was separated from the president and other passengers on the plane and later went into self-quarantine. He has since tested negative and reports feeling fine.

At least four others at Mar-a-Lago that weekend have since tested positive, including three who accompanied President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil for a dinner with Trump before Guilfoyle’s birthday party that Saturday night: Fabio Wajngarten, his press secretary; Nestor Forster, his top diplomat in Washington, and Nelsinho Trad, a senator. A fourth member of the Brazilian delegation, Karina Kufa, a lawyer, also tested positive, but she had not been at Mar-a-Lago. Another unidentified person at Mar-a-Lago the next day for a fundraising brunch with the president has also tested positive.

Bolsonaro said Friday that he tested negative, but the health minister, Luiz Henrique Mandetta, later said the president would be tested again as a precaution. Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami, who met with Bolsonaro while he was in town, reported Friday that he had tested positive.

While he has been described as nervous in private, Trump has publicly insisted he had no concerns even after a photograph emerged on social media showing him with Wajngarten.

Additionally, Forster had sat at the table with Trump for a more prolonged exposure. In the statement released by the White House shortly before midnight Friday, Cmdr. Sean P. Conley, the president’s physician, said he would monitor the president but discounted the need for him to be tested — even as Trump, by his own subsequent account, was in fact being tested.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .