- Twitter on Sunday added a warning label to a tweet from President Donald Trump, who recently tested positive for the coronavirus, but said he is immune and no longer contagious.
- Trump, who on Monday returned to the White House from the hospital, tweeted out that he received a “total and complete sign off from White House Doctors” around his COVID-19 diagnosis.
- “That means I can’t get it (immune), and can’t give it. Very nice to know!!!” the president wrote.
- Twitter flagged Trump’s tweet for violating its rules about “spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19.”
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Twitter on Sunday added a warning label to a tweet from President Donald Trump, who tested positive for the coronavirus and claimed he is no longer contagious.
Trump tweeted on Sunday that he received a “total and complete sign off from White House Doctors yesterday.”
“That means I can’t get it (immune), and can’t give it,” the president added. “Very nice to know!!!”
The tweet contains “misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19,” the Twitter label says. It remains accessible because “Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest.”
White House physician Sean Conley said in a statement Saturday evening that Trump “is no longer considered a transmission risk to others.”
“The assortment of advanced diagnostic tests obtained reveal there is no longer evidence of actively replicating virus,” Conley said. But Conley did not give further information, including whether the president has tested negative for the coronavirus.
Over the past couple weeks, Conley has been criticized for delivering omitted or distorted information regarding the president’s condition and symptoms. In a press conference earlier this month, for example, the physician avoided answering questions from reporters asking whether Trump had required or received supplemental oxygen.
Trump’s flagged tweet came after a Fox News interview with Maria Bartiromo on Sunday, during which the president first claimed to be “immune” to the coronavirus.
“It looks like I’m immune for, I don’t know, maybe a long time, maybe a short time,” Trump told Bartiromo. “It could be a lifetime. Nobody really knows.”
As Business Insider’s Morgan McFall-Johnson reported, no reliable indicator of COVID-19 immunity exists yet, making it difficult to know whether someone can be truly immune to the virus. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, health officials and researchers have not yet identified indicators of immunity.
Trump announced on October 2 that he and first lady Melania Trump tested positive for the coronavirus. Trump had been transferred to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, located just outside of Washington, D.C., but he was discharged a few days later.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
The accounts of both Trump and his campaign have been flagged by Facebook and Twitter multiple times for spreading misinformation about the coronavirus.
Most recently, Facebook took down a post that falsely claimed the coronavirus was not as deadly as the flu. In August, Twitter temporarily disabled the Trump campaign account after reviewing a video post that falsely claimed children were “almost immune” to the disease. The video has since been removed.
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