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WASHINGTON (AP) – US President Donald Trump sparked an angry backlash from the medical community Sunday with a protocol-breaking visit to supporters outside the hospital where he is being treated for the highly infectious and life-threatening novel coronavirus. .
He was masked as he waved from inside his bulletproof vehicle during the short drive outside the Walter Reed Military Medical Center near Washington, which seemed designed to retract the narrative about improving his health after a weekend of confusing messages from your doctors.
The last-minute limo outing came with Trump’s doctors satisfied enough with his progress to suggest the possibility of his discharge Monday.
READ: Trump could be discharged Monday: doctors
But experts complained that the exit violated their own government’s public health guidelines that require patients to isolate themselves while on treatment and still excrete the virus, and jeopardize the protection of the Secret Service.
Trump, who has been reprimanded repeatedly for disobeying public health guidelines and spreading misinformation about the pandemic, said in a video that appeared on Twitter just before the appearance that he had “learned a lot about COVID” by “actually going to school. “as I said. has fought the virus.
But health experts took to the airwaves and social media to criticize the “trick,” which they said proved he had learned nothing at all.
READ: Trump is ‘fine’, doctors say as insider offers more troubling picture
“Every person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary presidential ‘step’ now has to be quarantined for 14 days,” said James Phillips, chief of disaster medicine at George Washington University.
“They can get sick. They can die. For the political theater. Ordered by Trump to risk their lives for the theater. This is insane.”
White House spokesman Judd Deere said “appropriate” precautions were taken to protect Trump and his support personnel, including protective gear.
“The movement was authorized by the medical team as insurance,” he added.
