The Centers for Disease Control is now recommending that Americans wear cloth face coverings out in public, President Trump announced in a Coronavirus Task Force briefing Friday afternoon, emphasizing that the guidance is “voluntary.”
“So it’s voluntary, you don’t have to do it,” the president said. “…This is voluntary. I don’t think I’m going to be doing it.”
On Friday afternoon, the U.S. had more than 270,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus, and nearly 7,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
The briefing comes after the government releases its monthly jobs report for March, which is expected to show the economy grinding to a halt last month as a result of the pandemic.
The Department of Labor announced Thursday that a record 6.6 million Americans filed unemployment claims in the week ending March 28, an increase of more than 3 million claims from the previous week. President Trump signed a massive $2 trillion package last week which expanded unemployment insurance as the economic fallout from the crisis worsens.
How to watch the Coronavirus Task Force briefing today
The majority of states have issued stay-at-home orders in response to the crisis, but some states have yet to implement such measures. In an interview with CNN, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious diseases expert and a member of the task force, said he doesn’t know why certain states have not yet issued stay-at-home orders.
“I don’t understand why that’s not happening,” Fauci said. “If you look at what’s going on in this country, I just don’t understand why we’re not doing that. We really should be.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 has surged to over 6,000. The coronavirus task force coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx, has said officials are worried current social-distancing guidelines still aren’t being taken seriously enough by many Americans to keep the country’s death toll at or below 100,000.
