A wax figure of US President Donald Trump with a face mask was installed at the entrance of the Madame Tussauds Museum in New York shortly before the reopening of the world-famous tourist attraction on Friday.
"At over 6 feet, the president is quite the imposing figure, thus we felt he was the perfect figure to remind our guests to take those selfies safely masked”, museum spokesman Matthew Clarkson told CNN.
He said, as the museum noted in a press release, that with the US President having donned a medical mask "very little in public, this is a perfect opportunity for guests to get that unique safety selfie with Trump".
Madame Tussauds New York described the installation of the masked Trump figure as "an eye-catching reminder for all guests of the world-famous wax museum to wear face coverings".
Apart from the mask mandate, the museum has introduced a spate of other safety measures, such as timed and dated tickets, social distancing guidelines, as well as contactless payment, enhanced cleaning and employee health screenings.
Trump has repeatedly signalled a reluctance to wear a mask in public, questioning its effectiveness in combating the COVID-19 pandemic.
POTUS was for the first time spotted publicly wearing a face covering on a visit to the Walter Reed National Medical Centre in July. Shortly after, he tweeted that "many people say that it is Patriotic to wear a face mask when you can’t socially distance" and that "there is nobody more Patriotic than me, your favorite President!"
The US has been hit the hardest by the coronavirus outbreak, with 5.8 million registered cases and 180,857 fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins University's latest estimates.
