While the country has recorded more than 66,000 cases of contamination in 24 hours, the American president, Donald Trump appeared masked on Saturday 11th July 2020 during a public appearance.
President Donald Trump appeared for the first time on Saturday 11th July 2020, wearing a coronavirus protective mask in public, the day the United States recorded a new record of contamination.
The epidemic is progressing in the south
This first masked appearance of the president, during a visit to the Walter Reed military hospital in the suburbs of Washington, has a strong symbolic value in the United States at a time when the epidemic is in full expansion especially in states of the south like Florida or Texas.
Since the virus appeared, Donald Trump had avoided showing himself in public with a mask, even though the wearing of this protection is recommended by the American health authorities.
He had thus contributed to making this issue an issue of political controversy, because the refusal to wear the mask is seen in part of American society as an assertion of the individual freedom of the citizen vis-à-vis the federal and international authorities.
“It depends on the time”
On Saturday evening, Donald Trump put on a dark blue mask to visit wounded combat soldiers at the Walter Reed Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, near Washington.
“When you talk to soldiers who have just come out of the operating table, I think it’s very good to wear a mask,” he told reporters before the visit.
“I have never been against masks, but I am convinced that it depends on the time and place.”
The most affected country
The United States is by far the country most heavily affected by the pandemic with more than 134,000 dead – 134,729 according to the count made Saturday by Johns Hopkins University.
According to figures from this university of Baltimore which refers, the country recorded on Saturday a new record of contamination with 66,528 cases in 24 hours.
Read also: Covid-19: the United States officially withdraws from the World Health Organization
Disney World reopened
Despite this disturbing development, part of the Disney World amusement park in Orlando, Florida, was reopened to the public on Saturday, after four months of closure.
Hundreds of people queued to go to the Magic Kingdom, one of the two spaces to welcome the public with the Animal Kingdom.
All the visitors present had reserved their tickets to allow their number to be controlled in the park and to make physical distance possible.
Provision was made for taking the temperature at the entrance, wearing a mandatory mask, the ubiquity of hydroalcoholic gel dispensers and the minimum spacing of two meters at each attraction or inside the shops.
