Trump wears mask in public for first time

WASHINGTON－United States President Donald Trump was seen wearing a mask while visiting a military hospital near Washington DC, on Saturday, the first time he did so on camera since the coronavirus pandemic broke out in the country.

"I'll probably have a mask," Trump said ahead of his trip to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in suburban Washington to meet wounded service members and healthcare providers caring for COVID-19 patients.

"I think when you're in a hospital especially in that particular setting, where you are talking to a lot of soldiers, people that in some cases just got off the operating table," the president said. "I think it's a great thing to wear a mask. I've never been against masks, but I do believe they have a time and a place."

Trump has been refusing to wear a mask himself since the pandemic broke out, citing his good health and frequent negative tests for the virus. "I have no problem with a mask. I don't think you need one when you're tested all the time, everybody around you is tested, you're quite a distance," he said on Thursday.

Even Republican lawmakers have advised him to do so publicly so as to curb the spread of the contagion.

Regretting the fact that the "simple lifesaving practice" of wearing a mask has been politicized to showcase whether one supports Trump or not, Republican Senator Lamar Alexander said earlier that he had "suggested the president should occasionally wear a mask even though there are not many occasions when it is necessary for him to do so".

Trump wore a mask behind the scene in late May during a visit to a Ford factory in Michigan. "I did wear. I had one on before," he told reporters on camera at the plant when asked why he decided not to wear a mask.

"But I didn't want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it," Trump said, showing the reporters a mask with a presidential seal on it that he said was the one he wore.

A spokesman for the Biden campaign cast the president's action as too little, too late.

Stoking divisions

"Donald Trump spent months ignoring the advice of medical experts and politicizing wearing a mask, one of the most important things we can do to prevent the spread of the virus," spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement. "Rather than taking responsibility and leading, he wasted four months that Americans have been making sacrifices by stoking divisions and actively discouraging people from taking a very basic step to protect each other."

As the latest 1 million cases in the US were added over merely 28 days, more than 20 states in the country have now mandated wearing face coverings in public, either statewide or limited to counties where the case rate has surpassed government thresholds.

Cases in the US jumped by a staggering record of 71,389 on Saturday from the previous day, according to Bloomberg News. The total number of infections in the country is approaching 3,240,000 as of Saturday afternoon, with the death toll topping 134,000, data compiled by Johns Hopkins University showed.

Xinhua - Agencies