Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt tests positive for COVID-19

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt announced Wednesday that he’s tested positive for COVID-19.

“I got tested yesterday for COVID-19 and the results came back positive,” Stitt said at a news conference. “I feel fine. I felt a little bit achy yesterday. I didn’t have a fever but just a little bit achy so, I just did my regular testing and it came back positive.”

The first-term Republican governor has backed one of the country’s most aggressive reopening plans, has resisted any statewide mandate on masks and rarely wears one himself, according to The Associated Press.

Despite his diagnosis, he said that he would not consider mandating that people wear face masks in Oklahoma, KOKI-TV reported. He said Wednesday that he’ll “be taking precautions” and that as of Wednesday he had isolated away from his family.

“I’ll be working from home until it’s safe for me to get back to normal, so I’ll be doing a lot more Zoom calls,” he said. The governor added that he gets tested regularly for COVID-19, according to KOKI-TV.

Stitt attended President Donald Trump’s rally in Tulsa last month, which health experts have said likely contributed to a surge in coronavirus cases there. However, the governor noted Wednesday that he “would not have been contagious since before Saturday.”

The Oklahoma State Department of Health reported 1,075 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, raising the statewide total number of cases to 22,813. KOKI-TV reported the number of new cases set a new daily record in the state. More than 430 people have died of the coronavirus in Oklahoma.

More than 3.4 million cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the U.S. since the pandemic began, according to numbers compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. leads the world with the most coronavirus cases and the highest number of deaths with 136,000 killed by the viral infection, according to Johns Hopkins.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Cox Media Group