President Trump said during a television interview that he would not participate in a virtual debate with Democratic nominee Joe Biden, dismissing an announcement less than an hour earlier by the Commission on Presidential Debates about the format change.

The commission said the second presidential debate would be a “virtual town hall" to protect the health of all involved. On Friday, the White House revealed that Trump had tested positive for the coronavirus.

The Commission on Presidential Debates has announced that the second Trump-Biden debate will be held virtually. The commission says in a statement:

In order to protect the health and safety of all, the second presidential debate will take the form of a town meeting, in which the candidates would participate from separate remote locations.

The town meeting participants and the moderator, C-SPAN’s Steve Scully, will still be located in the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, Florida as planned. President Trump will participate from the White House. The televised debate is scheduled for 15 October. As yet there is no word statement from either campaign about the proposed new format.

One immediate effect is that it will take away any issues of how distant the two candidates should be from each other, or whether there should be plexiglass screens between them. This became a source of contention between the Mike Pence and Kamala Harris teams before their vice presidential debate on Wednesday night. Eventually they agreed to the debate being held with them both seated and at least 12 feet from each other, with screens between them.

There’s no word on whether Scully will be equipped with a mute button. The first debate between the president and Joe Biden was widely criticised for the number of times that Trump was allowed to interrupt the former vice president. Both campaigns would have to agree to any rule changes.

There is precedent for a US election to feature a virtual debate. In 1960, John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon debated remotely, with Nixon in Los Angeles, and Kennedy in New York.