For the first time on Saturday, US President Donald Trump wore a face mask in public, eventually bending to growing pressure to set an example of public health as coronavirus spread through America.
The President had on a dark mask featuring the presidential seal as he walked through the corridors of Walter Reed military hospital outside Washington to meet with wounded veterans.
Mr Trump donned the face covering as a long-expected upturn in deaths begun in the US according to data on the pandemic.
The number of deaths per day from the virus had been falling for months, and even remained down as states like Florida and Texas saw explosions in cases – on Saturday 66,528 new cases were reported, a record for a 24-hour period.
Scientists warned it wouldn’t last. Experts predicted states that saw increases in cases and hospitalisations would, at some point, see deaths rise too. Now that’s happening.
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“It’s consistently picking up. And it’s picking up at the time you’d expect it to,” said William Hanage, a Harvard University infectious diseases researcher.
The seven-day rolling average for daily confirmed deaths in the US has risen from 578 two weeks ago to 664 on July 10 according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
