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Trump calls high number of coronavirus cases in the USA a 'badge of honor,' attributes it to testing
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump called the number of COVID-19 cases in the USA – the highest in the world – a “badge of honor” Tuesday, arguing that the increasing number of cases is simply evidence the country is testing more people.
“By the way, you know, when you say that we lead in cases, that’s because we have more testing than anybody else,” the president said at the White House. “When we have a lot of cases, I don’t look at that as a bad thing. I look at that in a certain respect as being a good thing, because it means our testing is much better. So if we were testing a million people instead of 14 million people, it would have far few cases, right?
“So I view it as a badge of honor. Really, it’s a badge of honor,” Trump said.
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The USA has performed more than 12 million tests, according to the COVID Tracking Project. The country still faces testing shortages after months of hurdles in development and access.
At a Senate hearing last week, Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said U.S. testing for coronavirus is “nothing to celebrate” because the country “treaded water” during the early stages of the pandemic while nations such as South Korea tested people aggressively to curb the outbreak.
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Romney said that by March 6, the USA had conducted only 2,000 tests while South Korea had completed 140,000.
South Korea has had 263 COVID-19 deaths; the USA surpassed 92,000 as of Wednesday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
It took the USA until mid-April to pass South Korea in testing and until April 25 to surpass Finland.
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The USA still trails many nations in per capita testing, including the United Kingdom, Italy and Germany.
Despite the increase in national testing, health experts raised concerns that not enough is being done for states to safely reopen.
Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told a congressional panel monitoring the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic last week, "The U.S. 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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On May 6, Trump said, "If we did very little testing, [America] wouldn't have the most cases. So, in a way, by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad."
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