To Defend Own Record on Covid-19, Donald Trump Throws Shade at India’s Testing Numbers

United States President Donald Trump, while talking about Covid-19 testing, compared US and India’s figure in an attempt to deflect criticism against his administration’s pandemic response.

Trump said in Florida on Friday, that 60 million people had been tested for coronavirus in US, which was “close to six times” more than any other country. The US President compared the nation’s figure to India, saying that 11 million people had been tested there.

“Testing-wise, we’ve tested almost 60 million people throughout the country, which is about six times more than any other country, close to six times more than any other country. If you look at India, they’re at 11 million. We’re going to be at over 60 million, so they’ve done a tremendous job in testing considering we started off with very little. It was a unknown disease, and it was an unknown test,” he said.

Meanwhile, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany reiterated the same, saying that more than 59 million tests had been conducted in the US, with India at number two with “just about 14 million tests”, which she said was “quite a difference”.

According to the ICMR, India has conducted 1,93,58,659 coronavirus tests till now, with 5,25,689 tests conducted on Friday.

A statement released by the White House titled – President Donald J. Trump and His Administration Have Created The Best Covid-19 Testing System In The World – also seemed to follow the same narrative. It said that US was now averaging 810,000 tests per day, and during July, more than 930,000 COVID-19 tests were conducted in a single day.

“India has a population more than four times as large as the United States, but has only conducted around one-third of the number of tests,” the statement also said, adding that “thanks to President Trump’s revolutionary testing efforts” US had been able to track cases better than other countries.

It further read that countries that have not built a robust testing system in the way the United States had, had not been able to capture as full of a picture of the number of cases in their populations.