Marco Rubio has bluntly suggested that people should be wearing masks to help stop the spread of Covid-19. The Republican’s suggestion comes as his home state is recording more cases.
The Florida senator spoke to reporters after a lunch featuring Vice President Mike Pence. Many of the journalists were wearing masks. Rubio mentioned assisted living facilities (ALFS).
“The area where I think we have to definitely really surge on is nursing homes, ALFs, congregate living facilities that have a high number of people or obviously populations of people that are high risk,” he said.
“Those are the places where you’re really going to cut down the death rate if you can prevent outbreaks .
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“And that’s where I hope we focus both our testing and our prevention effort.”
“And then everyone should just wear a damn mask, like you guys are, like I am right now.”
“I would just encourage everyone — that’s what I said in there — to sort of become informed of the nuances of how your state is reporting,” Rubio said.
“In Florida, the state tells us 20 percent of the COVID cases that register as hospitalizations are people that are in the hospital for something else, like a knee replacement, but they’re tested so they tested positive.”
Rubio’s comments represent a break with President Donald Trump and other Republicans. However, some of his GOP colleagues have also begun to change tack on the virus as it has hit their states.
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Darragh Roche is a journalist covering U.S. politics and media
