WASHINGTON — The White Home on Monday ordered all West Wing workers to put on masks at work until they're sitting at their desks, an abrupt shift i
WASHINGTON — The White Home on Monday ordered all West Wing workers to put on masks at work until they’re sitting at their desks, an abrupt shift in coverage after two aides working close to the president — a army valet and Katie Miller, the vice chairman’s spokeswoman — examined constructive for the coronavirus final week.
In an inner e mail obtained by The New York Occasions, individuals who work within the cramped quarters across the Oval Workplace have been informed that “as an extra layer of safety, we’re requiring everybody who enters the West Wing to put on a masks or face masking.”
Requested at a Rose Backyard information convention whether or not he had ordered the change, Mr. Trump — who didn’t put on a masks and has repeatedly mentioned he sees no motive to — mentioned, “Yeah, I did.” However officers mentioned the brand new requirement was not anticipated to use to Mr. Trump or to Vice President Mike Pence.
White Home officers have scrambled since final week’s constructive diagnoses to maintain the virus from spreading all through 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue even because the president, Mr. Pence and plenty of different senior administration advisers who might have come into contact with Ms. Miller and the valet declined to self-quarantine. Mr. Trump mentioned on Monday that he and Mr. Pence had examined destructive for the virus.
Three high public well being officers have chosen to stay remoted for a time period — Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the director of the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention; Dr. Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the Meals and Drug Administration; and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the Nationwide Institute of Allergy and Infectious Ailments.
Throughout Mr. Trump’s afternoon information convention, senior White Home aides could possibly be seen standing alongside the facet of the Rose Backyard — all of them carrying masks.
The White Home additionally made some smaller adjustments, together with displaying indicators encouraging social distancing at entryways and asking aides throughout routine temperature checks if they’re experiencing signs, in response to officers. Monday’s e mail mentioned that West Wing workers members have been “not required to put on a facial masking whereas at their desk if they’re appropriately socially distanced from their colleagues.”
Most of the president’s high aides and advisers have eschewed masks of their appearances with Mr. Trump, regardless of their very own recommendation to their staffs to put on them. On Saturday, the protection secretary, Mark T. Esper, and the highest army chiefs sat barefaced across the desk with Mr. Trump on the White Home, apparently in contradiction of coverage on the Pentagon, the place officers have been social distancing for 2 months and carrying masks for a number of weeks.
Mr. Esper had made some extent of extolling the virtues of carrying masks whereas indoors throughout a go to to United States Northern Command in Colorado earlier within the week, saying that “within the open air, it’s not as important,” however including that “in a room, we’re carrying masks.”
The brand new White Home coverage on masks got here as Mr. Trump tried to reinvent his authorities’s troubled historical past on testing for the coronavirus, claiming that the US was “unmatched and unmatched” in its testing capability however ignoring the early failures to offer testing that allowed the virus to unfold invisibly for months.
Declaring as soon as once more that “if anyone desires to be examined proper now, they’ll be capable to be examined,” Mr. Trump mentioned that his administration was working with states to permit them to conduct 12.9 million exams in Might, insisting that the testing potential in the US compares favorably with different nations.
“We’re testing extra folks per capita than South Korea, the UK, France, Japan, Sweden, Finland and plenty of different nations,” he mentioned, ignoring nations the place testing on a per capita foundation is greater, together with Germany, Russia, Spain, Canada, Switzerland and at the very least 20 others, according to statistics compiled by Our World in Data.
Flanked by large posters that proclaimed “America leads the world in testing,” Mr. Trump also declared victory over the pandemic, saying that “we have met the moment and we have prevailed.” Later, under questioning, he revised his comments, saying he only meant to say the country had prevailed on increasing access to testing.
But the president’s claim that “we’ve prevailed on testing” was also premature, even by his government’s own standards. Though the United States has ramped up testing from 150,000 tests per day from a month ago to 300,000 per day recently, the current rate still remains far behind the five million daily target he himself set last month.
The president’s claim about testing being available for anyone was also misleading. It is one thing to have enough testing capacity for everyone who is symptomatic or has been in contact with someone who has tested positive, but that is quite different from having enough to provide reassurance to people considering returning to normal life.
The president announced that his administration had begun distributing $11 billion for testing approved by Congress almost six weeks ago and claimed that Germany and the United States were “leading the world in lives saved per 100,000.” That was also an exaggeration.
Germany does have one of the lowest mortality rates in the world, at 9.13 deaths per 100,000 people. The United States, by comparison, has a rate of 24.31 deaths per 100,000, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. That is lower than several other European countries, like Britain, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium and Sweden, but it is also higher than that of Canada, Japan, South Korea, Norway, Iran, Brazil and many others.
Mr. Trump also mischaracterized the trajectory of new cases in the United States.
“The numbers are way down from what they were two weeks ago,” the president said. “The numbers are really coming down very substantially. This weekend was one of the lowest we’ve had. The numbers are coming down very rapidly.”
Moreover, that trend is not “universal” across the country, as Mr. Trump claimed. While the figures in the New York City region have fallen, new cases are increasing in nine states and remained largely unchanged in more than two dozen.
The president abruptly ended his news conference after an Asian-American reporter pressed him on why he suggested that she “ask China” in response to a question on coronavirus death rates.
Weijia Jiang, a White House correspondent for CBS News, asked Mr. Trump why he had made a “global competition” out of stressing that the United States had done far better than any other country in the world on testing its citizens for coronavirus.
“Why does that matter,” Ms. Jiang asked, “if every day Americans are still losing their lives and we’re still seeing more cases every day?”
“Well,” Mr. Trump responded, “they’re losing their lives everywhere in the world and maybe that’s a question you should ask China.”
Ms. Jiang, who had been leaning into a contact-free microphone to ask her question, lowered her face mask and paused for a couple of seconds before asking, “Sir, why are you saying that to me, specifically?”
The president responded that he was “saying it specifically to anybody who would ask a nasty question.” Mr. Trump then called on Kaitlan Collins of CNN, another female reporter with whom he has engaged in similar exchanges, but then tried to move on to another reporter. After Ms. Collins twice tried to ask her a question, Mr. Trump ended the news conference and returned to the Oval Office.
Helene Cooper and Katie Rogers contributed reporting from Washington.