Senate Republicans were struggling to salvage a more than $1 trillion economic rescue package to respond to the coronavirus crisis when they got the message on Sunday afternoon: One of their own had been walking around the Capitol with Covid-19 for days as they debated how best to confront the rapidly spreading pandemic.
Senator Rand Paul had tested positive for the coronavirus, Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, told fellow Republicans over lunch. It was the news that lawmakers had been dreading for weeks as they went about their travel- and handshake-heavy routines while the disease circulated around the country.
The news set off a frantic race to retrace the steps of Mr. Paul, who had continued to show up in the Senate — even using the private senators’ gym, where he swam laps in the pool on Sunday morning — until he received the results of his coronavirus test sometime after his workout.
It injected a potentially dangerous new element into the intense negotiation over a stabilization package to bolster the country’s health system and social safety net and to prop up an economy teetering on the brink of collapse.
Mr. Paul, 57, Republican of Kentucky and a former practicing eye doctor, was “asymptomatic,” his staff said, relieving immediate concerns about his health despite a 2017 injury that affected his lungs. But his diagnosis raised the likelihood that other members of the 100-person Senate, where nearly half are 65 or older, had been exposed and might fall ill or need to self-quarantine just as they were racing to enact the rescue plan.
Mr. Paul had been informed last weekend that he had attended a fund-raiser in Kentucky with two individuals who later tested positive for Covid-19, a warning that sent a handful of other prominent elected officials into self-quarantine out of caution.
Not Mr. Paul.
He pressed on with his Washington schedule anyway. On Wednesday afternoon, he spoke and voted on the Senate floor. He dined at the Republicans’ closed luncheon on Thursday and on Friday, sitting with fellow senators. And after being informed of the diagnosis on Sunday, Senator Jerry Moran, Republican of Kansas, rose to tell fellow Republicans at lunch that he had seen Mr. Paul that morning at the senators-only gym, according to two people who heard him and Mr. Moran’s spokesman.
“I’ve never commented about a fellow Senator’s choices/actions. Never once,” Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, who is known to frequent the senators-only pool, wrote on Twitter. “This, America, is absolutely irresponsible. You cannot be near other people while waiting for coronavirus test results. It endangers others & likely increases the spread of the virus.” (A spokesman for Ms. Sinema said she had been practicing social distancing and had not been to the pool in two weeks.)
Mitt Romney and Mike Lee were in close contact with Sen. Paul in recent days, so right after the revelation, they self-quarantined. Romney has special reason to do so: his wife has multiple sclerosis.
Cory Gardner and Rick Scott are self-quarantining because of unrelated exposures.
So, without remote voting, the GOP is five votes short as the Senate decides on a gargantuan stimulus package.
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