Trump flaunts US testing tally, compares it with that of India

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has flaunted America’s coronavirus testing numbers in a bid to counter criticism of his administration’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. He cited India’s numbers for comparison to make the US figures look good.

“We’ve tested almost 60mn people throughout the country, which is close to six times more than any other country,” Trump said on Friday. “If you look at India, they’re at 11mn.” India had officially carried out 19.36mn tests by July 31.

The White House argued in the same vein in a statement that said, “We’re now averaging 810,000 tests per day, and during July, more than 930,000 tests were conducted on a single day... India has a population more than four times as large as the US, but has only conducted around one-third of the number of tests.”

White House press secretary Kayleigh Mcenany, too, used the India comparison earlier in the day, but with a different set of numbers.“we’ve done more than 59mn tests, with India at No 2 with just about 14mn,” she said.

According to Worldometer, India is No 4, behind China, the US and Russia.