As daily COVID-19 cases continue to rise, US President Donald Trump has told a roundtable event for seniors this week that there would be fewer cases of coronavirus if the US stopped testing and contact-tracing measures.
“If you don’t test, you don’t have any cases. If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any,” Trump said.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time the President has made these kinds of comments.
“So, the media likes to say we have the most cases, but we do, by far, the most testing. If we did very little testing, we wouldn’t have the most cases. So, in a way, by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad,” Trump said last month during a meeting with Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds.
“For instance, they would say we have more than China. I don’t think so. We have more than other countries. I don’t think so. But by doing all of the testing … we’re going to have more cases because we do more testing. Otherwise, you don’t know if you have a case. I think that’s a correct statement,” he added.
The comments come as Trump faces continued criticism for his response to the COVID-19 crisis.
Data from John Hopkins University shows more than 2.1 million Americans have now tested positive for the virus since the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared a pandemic in March.
