US President Donald Trump said he asked US officials to slow tests to detect the emerging "corona" virus, describing it as a "double-edged sword" that led to the discovery of more cases.
Trump said yesterday that the United States has now tested 25 million people, far more than other countries.
"When you do tests of this size, you will find more people and more cases," Trump said, before an election rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So I asked my assistants to slow down the tests. ”
A White House official said Trump was joking about his call to slow the tests.
"He was joking, clearly," the official added. We are leading the world in tests and performing over 25 million tests. ”
Trump said his actions to ban entry to travelers from China and Europe had saved "the lives of hundreds of thousands". But he said that the "false news" media were not credited with doing the best of what he described as a "supernatural act" to respond to the pandemic.
Many US states began to record alarming increases in Corona incidence rates, especially in the south and west, as Trump was speaking in front of the largest gathering in a closed hall in the United States for months.
Health experts say expanding HIV testing contributes to some, if not all, of the cases. They also describe it as a key way to combat the spread of the disease, which was detected in at least 2.23 million people across the United States as of Saturday.
According to Reuters statistics, the Covid-19 disease caused by the emerging coronavirus has killed more than 119,000 Americans so far.