But the country's top infectious disease expert also acknowledged that such a directive has been complicated by the nationwide dearth of personal protective equipment.
"The idea of getting a much more broad, community-wide use of masks outside of the health care setting is under very active discussion at the task force. The CDC group is looking at that very carefully," Fauci told CNN.
"The thing that has inhibited that a bit is to make sure that we don't take away the supply of masks from the health care workers who need them," he continued. "But once we get in a situation where we have enough masks, I believe there will be some very serious consideration about more broadening this recommendation of using masks."
Fauci cautioned that while "we're not there yet," he said he believed the task force was "close to coming to some determination" soon on whether to expand the administration's recommended mitigation measures to include masks.
"Because if, in fact, a person who may or may not be infected wants to prevent infecting someone else, one of the best ways to do that is with a mask. So perhaps that's the way to go," he said, adding that the subject was "under very active consideration" and would be raised at the task force's meeting on Tuesday afternoon.
Some public health experts, including former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, have suggested that encouraging the wearing of masks in public could help curb the rate of COVID-19 transmission in the United States, which now has more confirmed cases than anywhere else in the world.
More than 174,000 Americans have become infected, and at least 3,416 have perished as a result of the disease. Because of limited testing capacity, experts agree the actual number of positive cases is much greater.
President Donald Trump on Monday said he had taken note of the mask proposal, outlined in a recent report Gottlieb co-authored, and that it could be possible that Americans will be directed to wear the face coverings "for a short period of time."
"We'll take a look at it. For a period of time, not forever. I mean, you know, we want our country back. We're not going to be wearing masks forever," Trump said at the task force's daily press briefing.
The president also told reporters that "we're getting certainly the number of masks that you'd need" to implement the guidance, even though Fauci on Tuesday emphasized that the distribution of masks still needed to be prioritized.
"You don't want to take masks away from the health care providers who are in a real and present danger of getting infected," he said. "That would be the worst thing we do. If we have them covered, then you could look back and say, 'Maybe we need to broaden this.'"
Surgeon General Jerome Adams appeared to contradict both Trump and Fauci in an interview earlier Tuesday morning, when he stressed the short supply of masks in the U.S. and seemed largely dismissive of their potential effectiveness.
"What the World Health Organization and the CDC have reaffirmed in the last few days is that they do not recommend the general public wear masks," Adams told Fox News, explaining that the practice often leads to increased touching of one's face and can produce a "false sense of security."
He also warned that "we still have PPE shortages across the country," and promoted reserving masks "for the people who most need it," health care workers.
Although "there may be a day when we change our recommendations — particularly for areas that have large spread going on — about wearing cotton masks," Adams said, "the data is not there yet."
But the administration's current advocacy against masks is at odds with the views of several other countries fighting the coronavirus, some of which have proven more successful in halting its proliferation.
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