WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump, six months into a deadly pandemic and less than four months from Election Day, conceded Tuesday that the coronavirus would “get worse before it gets better” and urged all Americans to wear face masks “whether you like the mask or not.”

“If you can, use the mask,” he said. “Think about patriotism.”

He admitted his more sober assessment of the virus, which he read from a binder of prepared text, was “something I don’t like saying, but that’s the way it is.”

His remarks came on a day when the country recorded more than 1,000 deaths from COVID-19 for the first time since May 29.

Moments later, however, Trump responded to a question without notes and delivered his familiar refrain: eventually “the virus will disappear.”

The president’s first appearance in the White House briefing room since late April marked a shift in rhetoric and strategy that was simultaneously sudden and, in the eyes of many of his advisers, long overdue.