Trump says US topping virus cases is an 'honour'
President Donald Trump has argued it is "a badge of honour" that the US gets the world's highest number of confirmed Covid-19 infections.
"I look at that as, in some respect, to be a good thing since it means our testing is way better," he said at the White House.
THE UNITED STATES has 1.5 million coronavirus cases and practically 92,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
In second place is Russia, with practically 300,000 confirmed cases.
What did Trump say?
On Monday, Mr Trump was hosting his first cabinet meeting because the US outbreak began.
"Incidentally," he told reporters, "you understand when you say that people lead in cases, that's because we have more testing than anybody else."
"So whenever we have a whole lot of cases," he continued, "I don't look at that as a bad thing, I look at that as, in some respect, to be a good thing since it means our testing is way better."
He added: "So I notice as a badge of honour. Really, it's a badge of honour.
"It's an excellent tribute to the testing and all of the work that the majority of professionals did."
In line with the Centers for Disease Control, a federal agency, the united states had conducted 12.6m coronavirus tests by Tuesday.
Mr Trump was giving an answer to a question about whether he was considering a travel ban on Latin America, Brazil specifically. That country now gets the third highest number of confirmed cases, following the US and Russia.
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".
May be the president right?
While the US has conducted more tests by volume than any other country, it isn't first in the world on a per capita basis, according to your World in Data, a scientific publication based at Oxford University.
Its chart ranks the united states as 16th globally in conditions of tests per 1,000 people, before South Korea, but behind famous brands Iceland, New Zealand, Russia and Canada.
In the last week, the united states has been conducting between 300,000 and 400,000 tests daily, based on the Covid Tracking Project, a volunteer-led effort.
But Harvard Global Health Institute director Ashish Jha the other day told a congressional hearing: "THE UNITED STATES needs more than 900,000 tests every day to safely start again. We are doing in regards to a third of that."
The US has also reported the most coronavirus deaths on the globe, though on a per capita basis it ranks sixth behind famous brands Belgium, the United Kingdom and France, according to Johns Hopkins University.
US coronavirus testing rates have already been criticised on both sides of the aisle.
At a Senate hearing last week, Mitt Romney, a Republican, criticised the country's testing record, saying it was "nothing to celebrate whatsoever" because, he said, "we treaded water in February in March".
