Washington: US President Donald Trump, who has been hospitalised with COVID-19, was driven around outside the medical facility on Sunday so he could wave to a group of supporters on the street in a move critics derided as a dangerous political stunt.
Video showed Trump, wearing a black mask, waving from the back seat of a black four-wheel drive with two men – also masked – in the front seats.
“President Trump took a short, last-minute motorcade ride to wave to his supporters outside and has now returned to the Presidential Suite inside Walter Reed,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement. “Appropriate measures” had been taken, he added.
But experts pointed out that the outing broke his own government’s public health guidelines requiring patients to isolate while they are in treatment and still shedding virus – and endangered his Secret Service protection.
The US president has been criticised over his handling of the coronavirus crisis that has left nearly 210,000 Americans dead, the highest death toll anywhere in the world.
