WASHINGTON — It was sup­posed to be a scene of celebration.

Instead, the Trump campaign’s elec­tion night watch par­ty in the White House East Room — with few masks and no social dis­tanc­ing — is being eyed as a poten­tial coro­n­avirus super-spread­ing event and yet anoth­er sym­bol of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s cav­a­lier atti­tude toward a virus that is rip­ping across the nation and infect­ing more than 100,000 peo­ple a day.

Ben Car­son, the sec­re­tary for Hous­ing and Urban Devel­op­ment, is the lat­est attendee to test pos­i­tive, a depart­ment spokesman con­firmed. The event has been under scruti­ny since anoth­er attendee, the president’s chief of staff, Mark Mead­ows, con­tract­ed the virus, which has now killed more than 237,000 peo­ple in the U.S. alone.

Carson’s deputy chief of staff Coal­ter Bak­er said the sec­re­tary “is in good spir­its” and “feels for­tu­nate to have access to effec­tive ther­a­peu­tics which aid and marked­ly speed his recovery.”

The White House has repeat­ed­ly refused to say who else has test­ed pos­i­tive, even as the virus con­tin­ues to spread. The lat­est White House clus­ter, com­ing just a month after Trump’s own diag­no­sis and hos­pi­tal­iza­tion, includes a top Trump cam­paign offi­cial as well as a hand­ful of undis­closed White House staff, offi­cials said.

The White House has been increas­ing­ly secre­tive about out­breaks. Many White House and cam­paign offi­cials, as well as those who attend­ed the elec­tion watch par­ty, were kept in the dark about the diag­noses, unaware until they were dis­closed by the press.

That the virus would con­tin­ue to spread in the White House — even though senior staff and those who come into close con­tact with the pres­i­dent and vice pres­i­dent are fre­quent­ly test­ed — has come as no sur­prise to pub­lic health offi­cials who have balked at the White House’s lax approach.

And polls sug­gest that atti­tude was a seri­ous drag on the president’s reelec­tion bid as vot­ers chose to deny Trump a sec­ond term in favor of his Demo­c­ra­t­ic rival, now Pres­i­dent-Elect Joe Biden.

“The admin­is­tra­tion was cav­a­lier about the risks of the virus for them­selves and for the coun­try. And that’s one rea­son why we have so many cas­es,” said Dr. Joshua Sharf­stein, a pub­lic health pro­fes­sor at Johns Hop­kins University’s school of pub­lic health.

Even Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell has said he has been avoid­ing the White House since August “because my impres­sion was their approach to how to han­dle this was dif­fer­ent from mine and what I insist­ed that we do in the Sen­ate, which is to wear a mask and prac­tice social distancing,”

Trump had long claimed, with­out basis, that the virus was being hyped by Democ­rats to hurt his reelec­tion chances and would mirac­u­lous­ly “dis­ap­pear” after Nov. 3.

Mead­ows in par­tic­u­lar has long tried to play down the sever­i­ty of the virus. He rarely wore a mask in pub­lic, except dur­ing the peri­od imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing Trump’s infec­tion. At one point, he refused to speak to reporters on Capi­tol Hill after they request­ed he wear a mask.

He was again with­out one dur­ing Tues­day evening’s East Room event, where more than 100 of Trump’s most loy­al sup­port­ers, fam­i­ly mem­bers and Cab­i­net sec­re­taries gath­ered to watch the elec­tion results come in and see him deliv­er what they had hoped would be a vic­to­ry speech.

It was a fes­tive atmos­phere, with half-emp­ty glass­es of wine and oth­er bev­er­ages strewn across cock­tail tables in front of news cam­eras. Mead­ows, who spent time with Trump’s fam­i­ly before­hand, was seen work­ing the room, includ­ing giv­ing sev­er­al fist-bumps to those in atten­dance, before Trump took the stage ear­ly Wednes­day morning.

Car­son was there, along with Health and Human Ser­vices Sec­re­tary Alex Azar — who did wear a mask.

While every­one who attend­ed the East Room event had been test­ed in advance for the virus, there was no social dis­tanc­ing and min­i­mal mask-wearing.

Ear­li­er that day, Mead­ows had also accom­pa­nied the pres­i­dent to his campaign’s head­quar­ters in Vir­ginia, where Trump received rous­ing cheers from sev­er­al dozen staff and vol­un­teers. Mead­ows did not wear a mask, nor did oth­er White House staffers. Cam­paign aides large­ly did.

If Mead­ows test­ed pos­i­tive Wednes­day — as Bloomberg News report­ed — he would like­ly have been infec­tious dur­ing both events, said Sask­ia Popes­cu, an epi­demi­ol­o­gist who teach­es at George Mason University.

Mead­ows had also trav­eled with Trump in the run-up to Elec­tion Day, attend­ing dozens of ral­lies where he was fre­quent­ly seen inter­act­ing with sup­port­ers with­out masks.

Trump’s refusal to abide by his own government’s pub­lic health guide­lines through­out the cam­paign was a major source of frus­tra­tion for local gov­ern­ments as he sched­uled ral­ly after ral­ly in defi­ance of local caps on crowd sizes, even in pan­dem­ic hot zones.

While Trump had hoped his efforts to down­play the virus in a bid to revive a limp­ing econ­o­my would help him with vot­ers, many Repub­li­cans now believe that Trump might have won reelec­tion had he han­dled things differently.

Still, Trump’s approach reflect­ed the pri­or­i­ties of his sup­port­ers. AP Vote­Cast, a nation­al sur­vey of the elec­torate, found that about half of Trump vot­ers called the econ­o­my and jobs the top issue fac­ing the nation, ver­sus just 1 in 10 Biden vot­ers. A major­i­ty of Biden vot­ers, mean­while — about 6 in 10 — said the pan­dem­ic was the most impor­tant issue fac­ing the country.

The White House did not respond to spe­cif­ic ques­tions about the cur­rent out­break, but said that con­tact trac­ing had been con­duct­ed by the White House Med­ical Unit, con­sis­tent with Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion guidelines.

“Appro­pri­ate noti­fi­ca­tions and rec­om­men­da­tions have been made,” the White House said.

The CDC defines “close con­tact” as spend­ing at least 15 min­utes with­in 6 feet of an infect­ed per­son begin­ning two days before they test pos­i­tive or exhib­it symptoms.

But Popes­cu called the par­ty, in par­tic­u­lar, “a ripe envi­ron­ment for trans­mis­sion to occur,” and said any­one in atten­dance should have been informed and asked to take precautions.

“While they might not meet CDC guide­lines for expo­sure, I think when we’re look­ing at an indoor event with a lot of peo­ple for a pro­longed peri­od who are unmasked, out of an abun­dance of cau­tion, every­one should be noti­fied and encour­aged to stay home,” she said.

“Now is not the time to be cav­a­lier about the risks,” Sharf­stein said.

Ohio pas­tor Dar­rell Scott, a close ally of the pres­i­dent who attend­ed the par­ty, said he was unaware any White House offi­cials beyond Mead­ows had test­ed pos­i­tive until informed by a reporter and had not been con­tact­ed by any tracer.

While Scott, like many in Trump’s orbit, con­tin­ued to insist fraud was to blame for the president’s loss — despite no cred­i­ble evi­dence sup­port­ing those claims — he also blamed Trump for sev­er­al “unforced errors” dur­ing the cam­paign, includ­ing the way he talked about the virus.

“I can’t be upset if we shoot our­selves in the foot,” he said.

The lat­est out­break came less than two weeks after sev­er­al aides to Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence, includ­ing his chief of staff, test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus. And it came a month after Trump, first lady Mela­nia Trump and at least two dozen oth­ers test­ed pos­i­tive after Trump held large gath­er­ings of peo­ple not wear­ing face­masks, includ­ing the cer­e­mo­ny announc­ing the nom­i­na­tion of Judge Amy Coney Bar­rett to the Supreme Court.

Asso­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Zeke Miller and Kevin Frek­ing con­tributed to this report.