Oklahoma reporter who attended Trump’s Tulsa rally tests positive for coronavirus

A journalist who covered President Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Okla., last week announced Friday he has tested positive for the coronavirus.

Paul Monies, a reporter for Oklahoma Watch, said he got his positive diagnosis Friday, though he is not experiencing symptoms.

“Friends, I tested positive for #COVID19. I’m pretty surprised. I have zero symptoms (so far) and I feel fine. In fact, I ran 5 miles this morning. I spent the last few hours calling people I know I’ve been in contact with in the last 14 days. Be safe out there,” he wrote on Twitter.

Friends, I tested positive for #COVID19. I’m pretty surprised. I have zero symptoms (so far) and I feel fine. In fact, I ran 5 miles this morning. I spent the last few hours calling people I know I’ve been in contact with in the last 14 days. Be safe out there. https://t.co/oGpKsGs5u0

— Paul Monies (@pmonies) June 26, 2020

Monies was in the BOK Center last Saturday to cover Trump’s rally and said he wore a mask and practiced social distancing. He was never close to the president.

“I can’t say definitively that I got it at the rally,” Monies told The Associated Press. “But it’s someone I’ve been in contact with in the last two weeks.”

“I spent a couple of hours reaching out to anyone I was in contact with indoors, a few friends in the neighborhood,” he added. “I just felt it was my responsibility to tell people I knew myself that I have tested positive.”

News of Monies’s diagnosis comes after six Trump campaign staffers and two members of the Secret Service working in Tulsa ahead of the rally tested positive for COVID-19.

Oklahoma, as well as several other states across the South and West, saw a spike in coronavirus cases in recent weeks as it reopened its economy.