WASHINGTON
(AP) — President Donald Trump announced new federal guidelines Friday
recommending that Americans wear face coverings when in public to help
fight the spread of the new coronavirus. The president immediately said
he had no intention of following that advice himself, saying, “I’m
choosing not to do it.”
The
new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
encourages people, especially in areas hit hard by the spread of the
coronavirus, to use rudimentary coverings like T-shirts, bandannas and
non-medical masks to cover their faces while outdoors.
The
president exempted himself from his administration’s own guidelines,
saying he could not envision himself covering his face while sitting in
the Oval Office greeting world leaders.
“It’s a recommendation, they recommend it,” Trump said. “I just don’t want to wear one myself.”
The
new guidance, announced as states are bracing for critical shortfalls
like those that other parts of the world have experienced, raises
concern that it could cause a sudden run on masks.
Trump
and other administration officials sought to minimize any burden by
stressing the recommendations did not amount to requirements and that a
variety of homemade coverings were acceptable. Federal officials said
that surgical masks and N95 respirator masks should be left for those on
the front lines of fighting the spread of the infection.
Friday’s
announcement capped an evolution in guidance from the White House that
officials acknowledged has at times been inconsistent and confusing,
with the administration insisting over the last month that masks were
not necessary or even helpful.
“I
want to unpack the evolution of our guidance on masks because it has
been confusing to the American people,” Surgeon General Jerome Adams
said Friday.
Adams
said that although and he other public health experts initially
believed wearing a mask would not have a substantial impact on curbing
the spread, the latest evidence makes clear that people who don’t show
any symptoms can nonetheless pass on the virus.
“We’re
looking at the data, we’re evolving our recommendations, and new
recommendations will come as the evidence dictates,” Adams said.
First
lady Melania Trump embodied the contradictory messaging with a tweet
endorsing the new guidance even as her husband chooses to disregard it.
“As
the weekend approaches I ask that everyone take social distancing &
wearing a mask/face covering seriously,” she tweeted.
The
administration has said states should have done more to stockpile
medical supplies, but it’s not clear if anyone is prepared for the
potential rush that could ensue if people try to obtain medical masks
for themselves from private industry.
In
rural Florida, Okeechobee Discount Drugs has been sold out of face
masks for almost two weeks, and “we don’t know where you can find any
masks at this point,” said Stacey Nelson, one of the pharmacy’s owners.
“It’s
very hard to get these products, but people want them,” Nelson said.
“They’ve been getting mixed messages and people aren’t sure if they
should be wearing masks in our daily lives. It’s very confusing. Wear
them, or don’t wear them?”
For
most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such
as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some,
especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can
cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death.
In
fashioning the recommendations, the administration appeared to be
striving to balance political concerns about wanting to preserve as much
normalcy as possible with public health concerns that some infections
are being spread by people who seem to be healthy.
The
White House has faced pushback against rigorous social distancing
guidelines from states with lesser rates of infection. For the
hardest-hit areas, where social distancing has already been in place for
some time, the White House coronavirus task force thought there would
be less risk of people ignoring the other guidance if they covered their
faces.
The CDC
is recommending that people wearing cloth face coverings in public
places, such as grocery stores and pharmacies, where “other social
distancing measures are difficult to maintain.” The guidance especially
applies “in areas of significant community-based transmission.”
The
White House task force was debating into Friday on the final language
of the CDC guidance. CDC scientists wanted to make it national guidance,
believing that would do more to slow the spread of the virus.
White
House advisers, including Dr. Deborah Birx, wanted to limit the
guidance to virus hot spots. Birx said Thursday that she feared wider
guidance would lead to a false sense of security for Americans and cause
them to back away from more critical social distancing.
In
the end, they found a middle ground: a national advisory with special
emphasis that those in hard-hit areas should wear masks. Two people
familiar with the discussions outlined the internal debate, speaking on
condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to describe it
publicly.
As
with other public health guidance, the recommendation on face covering
has been a moving target for the administration. Under the previous
guidance, only the sick or those at high risk of complications from the
respiratory illness were advised to wear masks.
Adams
wrote on Twitter at the end of February that people should “STOP BUYING
MASKS” and said they were not effective in protecting the general
public.
On
Monday, he noted that the World Health Organization does not recommend
masks for healthy members of the population. Three days later, he
tweeted that though there remains “scant” evidence that wearing a mask,
especially improperly, can protect the wearer, “emerging data suggests
facial coverings may prevent asymptomatic disease transmission to
others.”
Dr.
Michael Ryan, the WHO’s emergencies chief, on Friday acknowledged a
“very important and very healthy debate” about how masks are used.
“We
still believe the main driver of this pandemic is symptomatic
(transmission),” he said, not people who may be infected but aren’t
showing symptoms.
“We
can certainly see circumstances in which the use of masks — but
homemade or cloth masks — at the community level may help in an overall
comprehensive response to this disease,” Ryan said.
____
Schneider
reported from Orlando, Florida. Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in
Washington and Jamey Keaton in Geneva, Switzerland, contributed to this
report.
