Daily US Times: US President Donald Trump described the world’s highest number of confirmed Covid-19 infections as a ‘badge of honour’. According to Johns Hopkins University, the US has 1.5 million coronavirus cases and nearly 92,000 deaths – far high than anywhere else in the world.
Russia acquired second place, with nearly 300,000 confirmed cases.
The President said at the White House: “I look at that as, in a certain respect, as being a good thing because it means our testing is much better.”
Mr Trump has been facing a lot of criticism over his handling of the coronavirus outbreak.
What did Trump say?
He was hosting his first cabinet meeting on Monday since the outbreak in the US began.
He told reporters: “By the way, you know when you say that we lead in cases, that’s because we have more testing than anybody else.”
He continued: “So when we have a lot of cases, I don’t look at that as a bad thing, I look at that as, in a certain respect, as being a good thing because it means our testing is much better.”
“So I view it as a badge of honour. Really, it’s a badge of honour,” he added.
He then said it’s a great tribute ti the testing and all the work of lots of professionals have done.
The US had conducted 12.6m coronavirus tests by Tuesday, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
The Democratic National Committee criticised the Republican president’s comments, tweeting that the 1.5 million Covid-19 cases in the US represented “a complete failure of leadership”.
Is Mr Trump right?
Our World in Data, a scientific publication based at Oxford University, shows that the US has conducted more tests by volume than any other country, it is not first in the world on a per capita basis.
Its chart ranks the US as 16th globally in terms of tests per 1,000 people, ahead of South Korea. But US is behind the likes of Iceland, New Zealand, Russia and Canada.
According to the Covid Tracking Project, a volunteer-led effort, over the past week, the US has been conducting between 300,000 and 400,000 tests daily.
But Harvard Global Health Institute director Ashish Jha last week told a congressional hearing: “The US needs more than 900,000 tests every day to safely open up again. We are doing about a third of that.”
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