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(Reuters) – The United States has reported more than a million coronavirus infections just because of its tests, President Donald Trump said Wednesday, calling the effort “much better than any other country in the world.”
The Twitter comments came amid warnings from state public health officials that the shortage of trained workers and materials has limited testing capacity.
“The only reason the United States has reported a million cases of coronavirus is because our tests are so much better than any other country in the world,” Trump said on Twitter.
“Other countries lag far behind us in testing, and therefore show far fewer cases.”
A Reuters count https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS-USA/0100B5K8423/index.html shows that the United States has by far the highest number of confirmed cases in the world with more than a million, with a total deaths exceeding 58,000 in late Tuesday
Cases exceeded 3.1 million worldwide, with more than 216,000 deaths, Reuters calculations show https://graphics.reuters.com/CHINA-HEALTH-MAP/0100B59S39E/index.html
TESTING FOR THOSE IN NEED
The increase pressures efforts to increase testing capacity, and health officials pointed to the challenge of taking testing to those who need it most.
“One of the problems has been getting the tests to the people who need them,” the US infectious disease expert said Tuesday. USA And health official Anthony Fauci told CNN in an interview.
Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that all Americans who need a virus test should be able to get one in late May or early June.
“Everyone who needs proof, based on how we approach identification, isolation, contact tracking, keeping the country safe and healthy, hopefully we should see that as we move towards the end of May , early June, “said Fauci.
The virus has taken an unprecedented price in the US economy. With a likely contraction in the first quarter at its fastest pace since the Great Recession, as stringent measures to stem the spread of the virus nearly shut the nation down, ending the longest expansion in its history.
The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits in the past five weeks has skyrocketed to 26.5 million, or nearly one in six American workers, and the Trump administration forecast an April unemployment rate of over 16%.
(Interactive graphic monitoring of the global spread of the coronavirus: https://graphics.reuters.com/CHINA-HEALTH-MAP/0100B59S39E/index.html)
(Report by Kanishka Singh in Bangalore; Clarence Fernandez Edition)
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