WASHINGTON (NYTIMES) – As part of a diplomatic tour through Europe in late October, the Department of State’s director of policy planning briefed journalists in London about the Trump administration’s strategy toward China. A video of the virtual event showed him coughing at least six times during the hour-long discussion.

The senior department official, Mr Peter Berkowitz, held face-to-face meetings the same day with British officials. He had similar meetings with French diplomats a few days later in Paris before flying back to the United States on a commercial airline – and then testing positive for the coronavirus.

Mr Berkowitz’s trip two weeks ago to Budapest, London and Paris has angered other Department of State employees who believed it was unnecessary. It has irritated foreign officials whom he may have exposed to the virus. And it has raised questions about the limits of in-person diplomacy during a pandemic – especially as cases are again skyrocketing across the United States and Europe.

Department of State protocols generally call for diplomats who are showing symptoms of the virus – including repeated coughing – to quarantine until they can be tested. Then, if they test positive for Covid-19, they are expected to remain overseas until they test negative or, in extreme cases, can be brought back to the United States with a biomedical unit.

Mr Berkowitz did neither, according to two Department of State officials with direct knowledge of his travels.

Given his senior position at the Department of State – the office he leads develops strategic analysis on global trends for the secretary of state – he was not required to seek permission from his superiors before planning the tour that focused on China and a new religious rights panel that is a top priority for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

The Department of State would not make Mr Berkowitz available for an interview. His symptoms while abroad have not been previously reported, although The Washington Post earlier disclosed that Mr Berkowitz had tested positive for the virus when he returned to the United States from Europe.

To be sure, Department of State officials said diplomatic travel had been more limited during the pandemic, although they could not say by how much.

“At the end of the day, diplomacy does not wait,” said Ms Morgan Ortagus, the department’s spokeswoman. “In many ways, the mission of the State Department is more important than ever right now as we support our allies and as we keep our adversaries at bay in the chaos.”

But the Department of State has at times severely limited overseas travel even before the coronavirus, such as during the Ebola crisis and government shutdowns or other budget negotiations when diplomats were told to talk to their foreign counterparts over the phone or by video conference.

Particularly in the pandemic-induced era of Zoom calls, current and former diplomats said, it is not clear what made Mr Berkowitz’s European trip so essential that it was worth the risk.

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“What’s the cost to America’s image if we infect our foreign interlocutors?” said Mr David Wade, chief of staff to former Secretary of State John Kerry.

During the 2014 government shutdown, “I had a line outside my door on Mahogany Row of people who didn’t want to cancel trips,” said Mr Wade, referring to the elegant decor of the secretary’s office suite. But he said: “If everything’s essential, nothing’s essential. Appearances on public panels aren’t the Camp David accords.”

Mr Pompeo and Mr Stephen Biegun, the deputy secretary, also continue to travel, but usually fly on government aircraft and are accompanied by Department of State medical staff who constantly monitor their health and, when necessary, administer coronavirus tests as required for entering many foreign nations.

In comments to journalists aboard his plane Oct 2, shortly after leaving Croatia, Mr Pompeo described a balance in deciding when face-to-face meetings were essential. He said the pandemic would help the department “be leaner and better and more efficient than we were when we came into this.”

“It’s been a little harder to travel around the world as a diplomat and see people,” Mr Pompeo said. “It always matters how you can have private conversations that are harder to have on the phone, but at the same time, we’ve all adapted just as your businesses have, just as every company and every family has had to do.”

Last week alone, other senior Department of State officials announced travel to Mexico and Nigeria. In nearly all cases, officials below the level of Mr Pompeo and Mr Biegun fly on commercial airlines for international travel.

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Questions were raised about whether the US ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), Ms Kay Bailey Hutchison, should have flown back to the United States earlier last month after having potentially been exposed to the virus in Brussels. The Department of State declined to comment on her case.

And in March, department employees complained that the US ambassador to South Africa, Ms Lana Marks, refused to quarantine after attending an event at Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump’s club in Florida, once other guests tested positive for the virus.

More than a half-dozen senior American diplomats – including the ambassador in Paris and the deputy ambassador in London – either went into quarantine or immediately took coronavirus tests after coming into contact with Mr Berkowitz during his European tour.

Embassy officials also informed the British and French governments that Mr Berkowitz had tested positive for the virus after meeting with them – conversations that American and foreign officials described as awkward.

British and French diplomats, the officials said, took the news graciously but exuded a whiff of exasperation about the Trump administration’s apparently cavalier attitudes toward preventing the virus’ spread.

Mr Eric Rubin, a former US ambassador to Bulgaria and president of the union that represents career diplomats, called it “especially important for senior US government leaders to set an example” to ensure that “the health and safety of their colleagues and of the public are their highest priorities.”

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