INTERNATIONAL: U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken cut short his trip to Southeast Asia on Wednesday after a journalist traveling in his delegation tested positive for the coronavirus, a spokesman for the US state department Ned Price has announced. A State Department spokesman has said U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has tested negative at every stop on diplomatic visits over the past week to Britain, Indonesia and Malaysia.
He had scheduled meetings for Thursday with senior officials in Bangkok, the Thai capital, but this third and final leg of the three-country tour has been cancelled.He did stop in Bangkok briefly to pick up flight crew for his trip back to the United States on Wednesday night. The State Department spokesman has said Blinken had called the Thai deputy prime minister, Don Pramudwinai, to “express his deep regret” over the change in plan.
The journalist in the entourage has tested positive for COVID-19 in Malaysia, after arriving with Blinken from Indonesia. That person did not participate in any of Blinken's programme of activities in Kuala Lumpur, and no other member of his party had contracted the virus, the US embassy in Malaysia has announced in a statement.
The state department spokesman travelling with Blinken that the decision to end the tour was taken to "mitigate the risk of the spread of COVID-19 and to prioritise the health and safety of the US travelling party and those they would otherwise be in contact with".
The US embassy in Jakarta has said on Twitter that all members of the party had tested negative in Indonesia.Blinken's plane will only make a short technical stopover in Thailand, with no official talks on the agenda. He will then return to the United States. Blinken's tour had been aimed at challenging an ever more assertive China and re-establishing US influence in Asia after the turbulence and unpredictability of the Donald Trump era.
He began the trip in Jakarta where he met with Indonesian President Joko Widodo, before giving a joint news conference on Wednesday with Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah in Kuala Lumpur. Before arriving in Indonesia, Blinken participated in a G7 foreign ministers' meeting in Britain, which was dominated by tensions with Russia. He was originally due to make a stop in Hawaii on the way back to the United States.
