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CDC Guidance on Face Masks Coming Within Days

Steve Herman

   WHITE HOUSE - Guidance to Americans from the Centers for Disease
   Control and Prevention on face coverings and masks will be released "in
   the next several days," Vice President Mike Pence said Thursday.

   "I don't think they'll be mandatory," President Donald Trump said of
   the national guidelines.

   Trump suggested people might want to put scarves over their faces for
   protection instead of the N95 respirators that are critically needed by
   those on the front lines responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.

   "If people want to wear them, they can," Trump said of masks that could
   play a role in preventing a wider spread of the novel coronavirus.

   The response coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, Dr.
   Deborah Birx, cautioned that people should not "get a false sense of
   security" that they are protected from the virus by wearing a mask. It
   is more critical, she said, for people to keep their distance from each
   other in public and to frequently wash their hands.

   White House senior adviser Jared Kushner said the federal government
   would send to the New York public hospital system a supply of 200,000
   N95 protective masks for medical workers to use through the next month.

   During Thursday's media briefing by the White House coronavirus task
   force, Trump announced he had taken a second test for COVID-19, this
   one a rapid "point-of-care" test.

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