WASHINGTON -- The Trump administration Friday changed its description of the Strategic National Stockpile and put forward a narrower vision of the role the federal government should play in supplying states' needs. The president also announced new federal guidelines recommending that Americans wear face coverings when in public to help fight the spread of the new coronavirus.
President Donald Trump immediately said he had no intention of following the advice to wear a mask himself, saying, "I'm choosing not to do it."
Trump said he could not envision himself covering his face while sitting in the Oval Office greeting world leaders.
The new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention encourages people, especially in areas hit hard by the spread of the coronavirus, to use rudimentary coverings like T-shirts, bandannas and nonmedical masks to cover their faces while outdoors.
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Announced at a time when states are bracing for critical shortfalls like those that other parts of the world have experienced, the guidance raises concern that it could cause a sudden run on masks if Americans turn to private industry to meet the expected surge in demand.
The Strategic National Stockpile change conforms with Trump's insistence that the supply is only a short-term backup for states, not a commitment to ensure supplies get to those who need them most during an emergency.
The alteration of the language describing the stockpile was reflected on government websites Friday, a day after Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and White House senior adviser who has taken a larger role in the coronavirus response, offered a new argument about the supplies.
After saying that states should use their own stockpiles first, Kushner on Thursday said, "And the notion of the federal stockpile was it's supposed to be our stockpile. It's not supposed to be states' stockpiles that they then use."
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Until Friday, the federal Health and Human Services website had reflected a different approach to the stockpile. The "Strategic National Stockpile is the nation's largest supply of life-saving pharmaceuticals and medical supplies for use in a public health emergency severe enough to cause local supplies to run out," the website used to say, according to an archived search.
"When state, local, tribal, and territorial responders request federal assistance to support their response efforts, the stockpile ensures that the right medicines and supplies get to those who need them most during an emergency," the website had said.
But, according to data, the description changed Friday morning: "The Strategic National Stockpile's role is to supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies. Many states have products stockpiled, as well. The supplies, medicines, and devices for life-saving care contained in the stockpile can be used as a short-term stopgap buffer when the immediate supply of adequate amounts of these materials may not be immediately available."
Officials at the agency said the change had been in the works for weeks, downplaying any connection to Kushner's comments.
Trump has long insisted that the primary responsibility lies with the states in managing the pandemic. He has resisted calls to issue a national stay-at-home order and said that he didn't want to overly use the Defense Production Act, which allows him to mobilize private companies for the effort, because he believed the states should take the lead in obtaining supplies.
"I leave it up to the governors," Trump said Friday about whether every state should have a stay-at-home order. "I like that from the standpoint of governing."
Trump on Friday touted the number of supplies it was sending to the states, including 8.1 million masks to New York.
Meanwhile, the White House on Friday stepped up precautions to protect the president and vice president from contracting the new coronavirus. Anyone who is expected to be in "close proximity" to Trump or Vice President Mike Pence will be given a new, quick covid-19 test "to evaluate for pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic carriers status to limit inadvertent transmission," according to White House spokesman Judd Deere.
AT ODDS WITH 3M
Late Friday, Trump announced that he directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to prevent the export of N95 masks like those made by 3M, along with surgical gloves and other anti-viral protective gear. He said exceptions might be made to help Italy and Spain, which have been hit hard by the coronavirus outbreak.
The N95 masks, also called respirators, provide more protection against the new coronavirus than ordinary surgical masks.
The Trump administration is using a Korean War-era law to compel 3M to send masks made in factories overseas to the United States.
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Peter Navarro, the White House trade adviser who has been put in charge of policy related to the act, leveled a broadside against the Minnesota manufacturer Friday.
"While hundreds of other large American multinationals are stepping up with pride and patriotism, 3M remains an outlier and its propaganda war must stop," Navarro said, adding that the company was "operating like a sovereign profit-maximizing nation internationally."
In a statement Friday, 3M defended its actions and said the administration had also asked it to stop exporting respirators made in the United States to Canada and Latin America -- a request it said carried "significant humanitarian implications" for people in those countries.
Navarro denied the administration had made that demand, but he said the White House was using the wartime act to provide "all of the N95 respirators it can possibly muster to prevent Americans from dying."
He accused the company of diverting supplies away from hospitals and health care providers overseas to make a profit.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said essential health supplies and workers flow both ways across the border, and blocking exports of 3M masks would be a mistake.
"I think of the thousands of nurses who cross the bridge in Windsor to work in the Detroit medical system every day," Trudeau said. "These are things American rely on."
DEBATE ON MASKS
Federal officials stressed that surgical masks and N95 respirators should be left for those on the front lines of fighting the infection's spread.
Trump and other administration officials sought to minimize any burden by stressing that the recommendations about Americans wearing masks did not amount to requirements and a variety of homemade coverings were perfectly acceptable.
"I want to unpack the evolution of our guidance on masks, because it has been confusing to the American people," said Surgeon General Jerome Adams.
Adams, who had repeatedly and publicly advised against the need for face coverings, said Friday that although he and other public health experts initially believed wearing a mask would not have a substantial impact on curbing the spread, the latest evidence makes clear that people who don't show any symptoms can nonetheless pass on the virus.
First lady Melania Trump embodied the ever-changing messaging with a tweet saying, "As the weekend approaches I ask that everyone take social distancing & wearing a mask/face covering seriously."
The CDC is recommending that people wear cloth face coverings in public places, such as grocery stores and pharmacies, where "other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain." The guidance especially applies "in areas of significant community-based transmission."
The White House task force was debating into Friday on the final language of the CDC guidance. CDC scientists wanted to make it national guidance, believing that would do more to slow the spread of the virus. White House advisers, including Dr. Deborah Birx, wanted to limit the guidance to virus hot spots.
In the end, they found a middle ground: a national advisory with special emphasis that those in hard-hit areas should wear masks. Two people familiar with the discussions outlined the internal debate, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to describe it publicly.
A FINE FOR NO MASK
Meanwhile, officials in Laredo, Texas, voted to fine residents who venture out in public without covering their faces, and confusion rippled across the bilingual border community on the Rio Grande.
Where were residents supposed to get masks, considering that drugstores had sold out long ago? Did you have to cover up in your own car, or at work? Would masked anchors deliver the evening news? And was the city seriously suggesting that people conceal their faces when entering a bank?
The emergency mandate, which took effect early Thursday, appears to be the first its kind in the country, as The Washington Post's Arelis Hernandez reported. Other communities, most notably Los Angeles, have strongly suggested wearing masks, but Laredo is taking a far more aggressive approach, threatening to punish those who don't cover their noses and mouths with a $1,000 fine.
The regulations continue to be a work in progress, Laredo Mayor Pete Saenz told reporters during a Wednesday news conference. He acknowledged that he'd received calls from bank tellers who didn't feel comfortable with people entering the lobby with masks on.
Dr. Michael Ryan, the World Health Organization's emergencies chief, on Friday acknowledged a "very important and very healthy debate" about how masks are used.
"We still believe the main driver of this pandemic is symptomatic [transmission]," he said, not people who may be infected but aren't showing symptoms.
"We can certainly see circumstances in which the use of masks -- but homemade or cloth masks -- at the community level may help in an overall comprehensive response to this disease," Ryan said.
DEATH TOLLS MOUNT
The number of people infected in the U.S. exceeded 277,500 Friday and the death toll climbed past 7,100, with New York state alone accounting for more than 3,200 dead.
The situation grew more dire in Louisiana, where more than 10,200 people have tested positive and deaths reached at least 370, up nearly 20 percent from the day before. Gov. John Bel Edwards warned that the hard-hit New Orleans area is projected to run out of hospital beds in little more than a week.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he would order the redistribution of critically needed ventilators. New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio called Friday for a national enlistment program for doctors and nurses to handle an expected surge in cases in New York and other places around the country.
"Next week in New York City is going to be very tough -- next week in New York City and Detroit and New Orleans and a lot of other places," de Blasio said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
Worldwide, confirmed infections rose to nearly 1.1 million Friday and deaths topped 59,000, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
Europe's three worst-hit countries -- Italy, Spain and France -- accounted for more than 32,000 dead, or more than half the global toll. The crisis there was seen as a frightening portent for places such as New York, where bodies already are being loaded by forklift into refrigerated trucks outside overwhelmed hospitals.
Italy, the hardest-hit country in Europe, with nearly 14,700 dead, continued to see signs that infections and deaths might be leveling off.
France reported a surge of more than 1,000 deaths Friday, bringing its overall toll to more than 6,500.
Spain recorded more than 900 new deaths, down slightly from the record it hit a day earlier. Cases are nearing 12,000.
For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. But for others, especially older adults and people with health problems, it can cause pneumonia. More than 200,000 people have recovered, by Johns Hopkins' count.
Information for this article was contributed by Jonathan Lemire, Amanda Seitz, Jill Colvin, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Eric Tucker, Zeke Miller, Mike Schneider, David Koenig, Robert Gillies, Karen Matthews, Marina Villeneuve, Michael Hill, Jennifer Peltz, Carolyn Thompson, Michelle R. Smith and Rebecca Santana of The Associated Press; by Ana Swanson, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Maggie Haberman of The New York Times; and by Antonia Noori Farzan of The Washington Post.
A Section on 04/04/2020