US President Donald Trump on Friday unveiled new guidelines saying that every American should wear non-medical face masks while in cramped public settings amid the coronavirus pandemic, while also saying he would not heed the “voluntary” advice.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is recommending that Americans wear “a basic cloth or fabric mask that can either be purchased online or simply made at home,” Trump said during a press briefing, adding: “This is voluntary, I don’t think I’m going to be doing it.”
The new guidance comes amid concerns that up to 25 per cent of people infected with Covid-19, the disease caused by the new virus, are not showing symptoms and could be unwittingly spreading it.
Face coverings will help “slow the spread of the virus and help people who may have virus and do not know it from transmitting it to others,” the CDC guidelines stated.
When asked why he does not want to wear a mask, the president emphasized that voluntary nature of the guidelines, adding that the covering would not fit the decorum of his office.
“Somehow sitting in the Oval Office behind that beautiful resolute desk, the great resolute desk, I think wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens. I don’t know, somehow I don’t see it for myself,” he said.
The new recommendations come as New York continues to be the most hard-hit state in the US reporting 562 deaths on Friday, the state’s largest single-day death toll, Governor Andrew Cuomo told a daily press briefing.
New York confirmed coronavirus cases also passed 100,000 on Friday, with over half of the infections in New York City.
With the need for ventilators and other medical equipment remaining dire, Cuomo said he would sign an executive order allowing the state to take supplies from private hospitals and companies and redistribute them to hospitals most in need.
The US Department of Defence on Friday said it was changing rules that led to delays in patients being admitted to the USNS Comfort after the ship was criticized for failing to relieve New York City’s swamped hospitals, as coronavirus cases continued to surge.
The 1,000-bed hospital ship had only taken 20 patients aboard as of late Thursday, the New York Times reported citing officials, while city hospitals struggled to handle the thousands infected with coronavirus.
This was due to strict rules preventing people infected with the virus or afflicted with some 49 other medical conditions from being accepted on the vessel.
Delays were also caused by patients having to be screened for Covid-19 at local hospitals before being taken to the ship.
On Friday, the Pentagon announced that “screening for care on the USNS Comfort will be modified and will now occur pier-side in an effort to reduce the backlog at some of the nearby New York hospitals.”
Cuomo also said the Javits Center, a huge convention centre in Manhattan that was turned into a makeshift hospital for non-coronavirus patients, was now receiving Covid-19 patients along with the Navy hospital ship after the federal government granted his request.
The governor said he believed the Navy did not want to accept those infected with the virus on the USNS Comfort because “it would be too hard to disinfect the ship afterwards.”
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said he was “sure that ship will be very full soon.”
“We’re going to need the Comfort and every other place in the city that we can get hospital beds up and running because we’re expecting a huge surge just in the next few days,” de Blasio told broadcaster MSNBC.
Later, the mayor said the city would need 15,000 more ventilators and 45,000 more medical personnel to fight the pandemic through April and May.
He called for a national enlistment programme for doctors and nurses to be sent to New York City.
The city on Friday sent out an emergency phone alert to residents calling for more health workers to volunteer. (dpa)
