As the US President Donald Trump held his first campaign rally since disclosing he contracted the coronavirus this month, top U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said the United States faced a “whole lot of trouble” if it did not encourage the universal wearing of face masks and avoid mass gatherings.

Iran Press/America: “We have a baseline of infections now that varies between 40 and 50,000 per day. That’s a bad place to be when you’re going into the cooler weather of the fall and the colder weather of the winter,” Fauci told CNBC.

According to Reuters, Fauci spoke as Trump began his rally in Florida on Monday evening, three weeks before the Nov. 3 election in which opinion polls show the Republican president trailing Democrat Joe Biden.

“We’re in a bad place now. We’ve got to turn this around,” said Fauci, who has been director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984 and a key member of the White House coronavirus task force.

“If we do five fundamental things: Universal wearing of masks, maintaining physical distance, avoiding congregate settings or crowds ... doing things more outdoors, as opposed to indoors and washing your hands frequently, those simple things ... can certainly turn around the spikes that we see and can prevent new spikes from occurring.”

Asked what the consequences would be of not following such steps, Fauci replied: “I think we’re facing a whole lot of trouble.”

US President Donald Trump on Sunday declared himself immune to Covid-19, saying ready for his second presidential debate with Joe Biden. Donald Trump throws face masks into the crowd as he arrives for a campaign rally at Orlando Sanford International Airport.

There has been less transparency surrounding Trump's own state of health, with his medical team repeatedly refusing to say when he last tested negative for the virus. That has fueled suspicions that he may not have been tested for several days prior to his diagnosis.

Covid-19 has killed more than 214,000 people in the United States.

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