MY BADGE OF HONOUR
TRUMP SAYS LEADING WORLD IN VIRUS CASES IS A ‘GOOD THING’ AS IT SHOWS US TESTING IS ‘MUCH BETTER’
DONALD TRUMP says it is a ‘badge of honour’ that the US has the world’s highest number of coronavirus cases.
The president boasted it was a ‘good thing’ as it showed how well officials had performed at carrying out tests.
It came as the death toll in the US approached 92,000 yesterday, while the number of positive Covid-19 infections stood at more than 1.5million.
However, it is thought the real number of fatalities and cases, as in other badlyaffected countries like the UK and Italy, is much higher.
Mr Trump told reporters: ‘When you say we lead in cases, that’s because we have more testing than anybody else. If you’re testing 14million people, then you’re going to find many more cases.
‘I don’t look at that as a bad thing, I look at that, in a certain respect, as a good thing, because our testing is much better.’ He added: ‘I view it as a badge of honour. It’s a great tribute to the testing and all of the work that a lot of professionals have done.’
At a White House briefing, Mr Trump again defended himself from critics over his decision to take anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to ward off the virus, despite his own officials saying there was no evidence it worked.
He described a medical study that highlighted how some virus patients treated with the drug had a higher risk of death as a ‘Trump enemy statement’.
‘If you look at the one survey – the only bad survey – they were giving it to people that were in very bad shape. They were very old. Almost dead,’ the president added.