During a presidential press conference on Tuesday, President Donald Trump made lighthearted remarks after his Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., sneezed in the middle of a discussion on prescription drugs.
Trump paused, turned to Kennedy, and said, “God bless you, Bobby.” After a short beat, he added, “I hope I didn’t catch COVID just then!”
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla was also at the event. Looking his way, Trump joked, “He’s got Paxlovid, give me a Paxlovid immediately!” — a reference to the antiviral medication used to treat COVID-19.
Trump’s quip came against the backdrop of his own history with the virus. He was president during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and contracted the disease during a White House outbreak that stretched from September 2020 into January 2021.
In his 2021 memoir, Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows revealed that the president initially tested positive for COVID just three days before debating Joe Biden on Sept. 29, 2020. Meadows wrote that Trump was quickly given another test after the first result, and when the follow-up came back negative, the president considered it a “clean slate.” He went on to meet with military families, attend a Pennsylvania rally, and take the debate stage.
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On Oct. 2, 2020, Trump announced that both he and First Lady Melania Trump had tested positive. He was treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center before returning to public events on Oct. 10.
Kennedy, meanwhile, has faced scrutiny for his own handling of pandemic policy. In May 2025, he sparked controversy by removing the COVID vaccine from the recommended immunization schedule for healthy children and pregnant women under the Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative.
The following month, HHS defended the decision in a document to Congress that cited disputed research and misrepresented other findings, according to NPR and KFF Health News. The document linked vaccines to heart conditions such as myocarditis and pericarditis, despite updated studies showing those risks are greater after contracting COVID itself than after vaccination.
“This is RFK Jr.’s playbook,” Sean O’Leary, chair of the Committee on Infectious Diseases for the American Academy of Pediatrics, told KFF Health News at the time. “Either cherry-pick from good science or take junk science to support his premise — this has been his playbook for 20 years.”
