President Donald Trump suggested to a Florida rally that he may fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top expert on infectious diseases and a leading member of the White House coronavirus task force.

Speaking to the crowd after midnight early Monday morning, the president was complaining about the news media coverage of the coronavirus pandemic when rally-goers began chanting, "Fire Fauci!"

"Don't tell anybody, but let me wait until a little bit after the election," Trump responded. "I appreciate the advice."

"He's been wrong a lot," the president told the crowd of Fauci. "He's a nice man though."

Fauci has served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for over 30 years.

Trump's comments come after Fauci's hard-hitting interview with The Washington Post in which he criticized the U.S. government's response to the coronavirus pandemic, including Dr. Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist and the president's hand-picked adviser on COVID-19.

Nearly 50,000 people across the United States remain hospitalized for COVID-19.

As of Sunday, the number of current hospitalizations nationwide was 47,502, according to data collected by The COVID Tracking Project.

That figure has been steadily climbing since mid-September.

Russia confirmed 18,257 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, according to the country's coronavirus response headquarters.

It's the fourth straight day that Russia has reported over 18,000 new infections. The latest daily tally falls just short of the country's all-time high of 18,665 new cases in a 24-hour reporting period, which were confirmed a day earlier.

An additional 238 deaths from COVID-19 were also registered nationwide in the last 24 hours, down from last week's peak of 366 fatalities, according to Russia's coronavirus response headquarters.

Moscow remains the epicenter of the country's outbreak and recent surge. More than 26% of the new cases -- 4,796 -- and over 22% of the new deaths -- 53 -- were reported in the capital.

The nationwide, cumulative total now stands at 1,655,038 cases with 28,473 deaths, according to Russia's coronavirus response headquarters.

Last week, Russia’s health and consumer rights regulator, Rospotrebnadzor, introduced a nationwide mask mandate and ordered all clubs, bars, restaurants and other entertainment venues to be closed between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. Russian authorities have repeatedly said they will not impose another nationwide lockdown.

The Eastern European country of 145 million people has the fourth-highest tally of COVID-19 cases in the world, behind only the United States, India and Brazil, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

ABC News' Alina Lobzina contributed to this report.

The El Paso County Medical Examiner's Office set up a fourth refrigerated mobile morgue as the COVID-19 death toll in the westernmost Texas county surpassed 600, according to a report by El Paso ABC affiliate KVIA.

"My understanding is that we just got our fourth one," El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego told KVIA on Sunday afternoon.

As of early Monday, El Paso county had confirmed a total of 50,114 cases of COVID-19 including at least 602 deaths. There were 943 patients who remained hospitalized with the disease, including 271 in intensive care units.

The death toll is expected to continue to rise as the number of COVID-19 patients hospitalized in ICUs and on ventilators reached an all-time high over the weekend. Health experts have said that many ventilator patients ultimately don't survive the disease.

The El Paso County judge recently ordered a shutdown of all non-essential services and businesses for two weeks in a bid to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus. The El Paso County Sheriff's Office announced Saturday that it would begin aggressively enforcing Samaniego's shutdown order, which is being challenged in court.