(WASHINGTON) — Rep. Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, announced Tuesday he has COVID-19 two days ahead of a prime-time hearing Thursday.

“I tested positive for COVID-19 yesterday, and I am experiencing mild symptoms,” Thompson said in a statement. “Gratefully, I am fully vaccinated and boosted. I am continuing to follow CDC guidelines and will be isolating for the next several days.”

Despite Thompson’s diagnosis, the committee’s next hearing later this week will go on as planned.

“While Chairman Thompson is disappointed with his COVID diagnosis, he has instructed the Select Committee to proceed with Thursday evening’s hearing,” a spokesperson for the committee said in a statement. “Committee members and staff wish the Chairman a speedy recovery.”

Thursday’s hearing will focus on former President Donald Trump’s response to the attack, zeroing in on the 187 minutes between his speech at the Ellipse and his statement later that day telling rioters to go home.

Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., told “GMA 3” last week that evidence shows Trump wasn’t emphatic in his call to the rioters to stop the violence.

Luria will be leading the hearing along with Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger.

“Mr. Kinzinger and I plan to go through that 187 minutes. What happened between the time that [Trump] left the stage, gave these inflammatory remarks and gave people the impression … that he was going to himself march with this crowd to the Capitol,” Luria said.

“[And] what happened between that moment and then around 4:17 in the afternoon, which is about 187 minutes later, when he finally made a statement to the nation, to the people at the Capitol to go home,” she added.

Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to former chief of staff Mark Meadows, previously testified that Trump was not empathetic to the violent language targeting his vice president during the riot — including calls to “hang Mike Pence.”

Two more aides in Trump’s White House are expected to testify before the panel, sources familiar with the matter confirmed to ABC News.

Former deputy White House press secretary Sarah Matthews and Matthew Pottinger, a member of the National Security Council during the Trump administration, are slated to speak Thursday. Both officials resigned from their posts on Jan. 6, 2021.

Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, has opened each of the seven public hearings the committee has held since early June.

In his statement Tuesday, Thompson encouraged Americans to get vaccinated.

“The pandemic has impacted our lives, changed the way we work, and affected our daily activities,” he said. “Vaccinations are crucial to humanity. The message to unvaccinated Americans is to protect yourself from infectious diseases by getting vaccinated. We must continue to do our part.”

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden will sign an executive order on Tuesday that codifies a 2020 law dealing with Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad.

Drawing on the 2020 Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act, the new executive order will reinforce the U.S. government’s efforts to support families of Americans wrongfully detained or held hostage overseas, according to the White House.

The order will authorize the federal government to impose financial sanctions on those who are involved — directly or indirectly — in wrongful detaining Americans abroad, the White House said. Moreover, government agencies will be directed to improve engagement with those Americans’ families, including sharing intelligence information about their loved ones and the government’s efforts to free them. The order will also charge experts across agencies with developing “options and strategies to deter future hostage-takings,” the White House said.

A senior Biden administration official told reporters that new sanctions will not be announced on Tuesday.

In addition to the executive order, Biden will introduce a new “risk indicator” — “the ‘D’ indicator” — to the U.S. Department of State’s travel advisories for particular countries to alert Americans of the risk of wrongful detention by a foreign government, according to the White House.

Starting Tuesday, the first countries to receive this additional risk indicator will be China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela, another senior administration official told reporters. The “D” indicator joins the existing “K” indicator that covers the risk of kidnapping and hostage-taking by non-state actors, as well as a range of other existing risk indicators.

China’s “D” risk designation may spark ire in Beijing, where Chinese officials have largely tried to avoid the subject of wrongful detentions and where Western sanctions are a constant trigger.

Experts estimate that roughly 200 Americans are arbitrarily jailed in China, and that even more are subject to unlawful “exit bans,” barring them from leaving the country. Some advocates have pushed for the Biden administration to take a more vocal approach to secure their freedom, rather than the standard behind-the-scenes diplomacy. But the State Department has recently tried a similar strategy — updating their official advisory to American and instructing them to reconsider travel plans to China due to “arbitrary enforcement of local laws.”

Syria, with which the United States does not currently have formal diplomatic relations, will be notably excluded from the “D” risk designation on Tuesday. U.S. officials believe that while the Syrian government may not be currently holding American journalist Austin Tice in its custody, it could have valuable information on his whereabouts and perhaps those of other missing Americans. Tice, 40, was abducted in Syria nearly 10 years ago.

The White House recently held a telephone call for the relatives of detained Americans to share information with them about these new announcements. Some of them are in Washington, D.C., this week for the unveiling of a mural depicting their loved ones, according to a spokesperson for many of the families, Jonathan Franks.

Franks, who represents a group called the Bring Our Families Home Campaign, accused U.S. officials of holding a “one-way conversation with families” and ignoring their requests to meet with Biden.

The public mural in Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood will depict the faces of 18 American hostages and wrongful detainees, according to Franks. Among those featured will be American basketball star Brittney Griner, 31, and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, 52, both of whom remain detained in Russia, as well as U.S. permanent resident Paul Rusesabagina, 68, who inspired the acclaimed 2004 film Hotel Rwanda and was sentenced last September to 25 years in Rwandan prison over terrorism charges.

Franks accused the White House of rolling out these new steps in order to “pre-manage the press attention from many hostage families being in D.C. this week to unveil their mural,” saying “the White House is taking executive action to direct itself to follow existing law.”

The White House declined to comment in response to Franks.

According to the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, there are actually 64 publicly known cases of Americans being held hostage or wrongfully detained around the world.

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