US President Donald Trump tweeted an image of himself wearing a face mask, calling the act 'patriotic' on Monday.
This comes after the President refused to set an example by wearing a mask to contain the spread of COVID-19, saying people should have "certain freedom" to not wear one.
"We are United in our effort to defeat the Invisible China Virus, and many people say that it is Patriotic to wear a face mask when you can't socially distance," the tweet said.
"There is nobody more Patriotic than me, your favorite President."
President Trump wore a face mask for the first time in public on the 11th July during a visit to the military hospital.
This was more than three months after the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention recommended the use of face coverings in public to help slow the spread of COVID-19.
Trump told Fox News in an interview on the 19th July, he was a believer in masks, "but I leave it up to the governors" whether they make it mandatory or not.
When asked if he regretted not wearing a mask in public from the start, Trump said, "No, I want people to have certain freedom and I don't believe in that no."
"I don't agree with the statement that if everybody wears a mask, everything can disappear," he told Fox News.
In the interview on Sunday, Trump also said that the efficient COVID-19 testing programme in the US was the reason for the surge in new cases.
"We have more tests by far than any country in the world."
"Many of those cases are young people that would heal in a day. They have the sniffles and we put it down as a test. Don't forget, I guess it's like 99.7 percent, people are going to get better, and in many cases they're going to get better very quickly," Trump said.
According to Worldometers.com, which collates COVID-19 data, China has done the most total tests in the world with the US in second place. On a tests per million basis, the US comes in at number 24.
Twitter users hit back on his tweet, saying that he's only wearing a mask now because his poll numbers collapsed.
