(CNN) President Donald Trump on Saturday suggested health care workers sanitize and reuse masks when treating coronavirus patients, rather than "throwing away" masks that are in short supply.

"I have to tell you, the throwing away of the masks, being in private business, the throwing away of the mask right away, they're throwing it away," Trump said during Saturday's White House coronavirus briefing.

Suggesting that health care workers instead clean and reuse the masks, the President said: "We have very good liquids for doing this, sanitizing the masks, and that that's something they're starting to do more and more. They're sanitizing the masks."

It is unclear which type of mask the President was describing, but US Food and Drug Administration guidelines for the common N95 respirator masks state they "should not be shared or reused."

Neither the FDA nor Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines suggest the possibility of sanitizing masks for safe reuse.

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