The Trump administration suddenly shut the Washington Monument over introduction worries from a new visit by Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, who tried positive this week for the Covid.
Interior representative Nicholas Goodwin said Friday “a couple” of employees have isolated since Bernhardt’s visit, “bringing about a transitory labor force decrease at the landmark and its impermanent conclusion.” The park administration posted a short notification of the conclusion on its site at some point Thursday.
An authority with an autonomous backing bunch for national parks and park laborers on Friday scrutinized Bernhardt, saying the interior secretary had neglected to secure wellbeing and wellbeing in general during the pandemic .
Bernhardt had been delayed to permit shutting of national parks to restrict disease among park employees, guests and neighborhood inhabitants, said Kristen Brengel, a VP of the National Parks Conservation Association. National park employees likewise have communicated worry at his and other Interior authorities proceeding to visit national parks and other government destinations during the pandemic, Brengel said.
“It truly is putting your own advantage over the wellbeing and security of park staff, is the thing that it comes down to,” she said.
Goodwin said in an email that “the wellbeing and security of general society and our employees is our main concern.”
“Interior has a staggering group of in excess of 60 general wellbeing experts on staff that have been driving the Department’s pandemic reaction endeavors with the Secretary and different individuals from administration over the previous year,” he said.
Goodwin said the Washington Monument, regularly one of the capital’s most visited locales, would resume Monday, with tickets going marked down Sunday.
The conclusion comes after the Interior Department uncovered Wednesday, after a request from The media, that Bernhardt had tried positive for the Covid.
Bernhardt was isolating and was as of now without manifestations, Goodwin said in an email that day. Interior authorities didn’t react to questions Thursday and Friday about the secretary’s present condition. Nor have they said how Bernhardt may have been uncovered.
The National Park Service has been requiring individuals from the general population to wear face masks and take other COVID-19 safeguards at the landmark since in any event Oct. 1. Goodwin said no park laborer at the landmark has tried positive for COVID-19 from that point forward.
Bernhardt had been wearing a cover and in any case following proposals of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention all through his visit, Goodwin said.
Bernhardt is one of various Trump administration staff members and authorities to test positive for the Covid. That incorporates President Donald Trump, who was hospitalized in October in the wake of contracting COVID-19.
Bernhardt’s and the park administration’s online media feed have shown him keeping up a bustling timetable of visits to national parks and different locales under his organization during the pandemic. Posts show Bernhardt wearing a cover during those visits more every now and again now than in the primary months of the pandemic.
In the photographs, formally dressed National Park Service employees regularly are individuals standing closest him, frequently without masks.