KY State Auditor Mike Harmon tests positive for COVID-19 a day after getting vaccine
Kentucky State Auditor Mike Harmon has tested positive for COVID-19 one day after he received an initial dose of the vaccine, his office announced Wednesday morning.
Harmon said he thinks he was “unknowingly exposed to the virus and infected either shortly before or after” receiving his first dose of of the Pfizer vaccine on Monday.
“While the timing of my positive test comes one day after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, I still have full faith in the vaccine itself, and the need for as many people to receive it as quickly as possible,” he said.
Harmon, 54, said his wife was tested on Tuesday morning after she learned that she may have been exposed to the virus. Her test was positive, prompting him to also get a test, which returned positive.
“My wife and I only have mild symptoms thus far, and we are taking all necessary steps to self-isolate and follow the recommendations of public health officials and the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention],” Harmon, a Republican who won a second four-year term in 2019, said in a news release Wednesday morning.
Harmon received the first dose of a vaccine to protect against the novel coronavirus on Monday in the Capitol Rotunda, alongside other state leaders including Secretary of State Michael Adams and a handful of Kentucky Supreme Court justices. Both the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines require a follow-up booster shot three weeks after the first dose is administered, and only then — roughly a month after the first shot — is the vaccine considered fully effective.
Harmon joins a handful of state lawmakers who have contracted the virus in 2020. Last week, Republican state Rep. Thomas Huff of Shepherdsville posted on Facebook that he’d been in an intensive care unit for about a week due to “complications from COVID-19-related pneumonia.” Huff posted about his discharge on Christmas Eve.
As lawmakers ready for the start of the next regular legislative session on January 5, several state officials, Republican and Democrat, have already received the first round of immunizations to protect against the virus, including Gov. Andy Beshear, House Speaker David Osborne and Senate President Robert Stivers.
Republican Commissioner of Agriculture Ryan Quarles, 37, publicly declined a dose of the Pfizer vaccine earlier this week when it was offered to him, saying he doesn’t think “rank-and-file politicians should be leapfrogging over those who are at higher risk of infection.”
This story was originally published December 30, 2020 at 10:39 AM.
