Trump says US testing unrivaled, but is it?

Even as health experts say more testing for the coronavirus is needed for states to safely begin lifting the restrictions put in place to slow the outbreak, President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed the U.S. not only has sufficient testing capacity, but is outpacing the world in the effort.

“In the span of just a few short months, we’ve developed a testing capacity unmatched and unrivaled anywhere in the world, and it’s not even close,” Trump told reporters at a White House news briefing Monday. “This is a core element of our plan to safely and gradually reopen America.”

Since the outbreak began, the president has tried to paint as positive a picture as possible of the pandemic and his administration’s response. Trump has said he was trying to give the public reasons for hope and optimism, but critics have accused him of dangerously downplaying the threat because he was more concerned about the economic impact than the danger to public health.

Despite Trump’s efforts to instill optimism, a majority of Americans believe “the worst is yet to come,” according to a CNN poll released Tuesday. And only 36% of Americans say they trust the information coming from the president on the coronavirus, compared with 74% who say they trust the CDC and 55% who say they trust CNN.

During a March 6 visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, when the outbreak was just beginning in the U.S., the president said, “Anybody that wants a test can get a test.”

After Trump repeated that claim at Monday’s briefing, Adm. Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services, made a slight tweak to the president’s wording.

“Everybody who needs a test can get a test,” he said.

“Right now in America, anybody who needs a test can get a test in America with the numbers we have,” he said. “If you are symptomatic with a respiratory illness, that is an indication for a test and you can get a test.”

Trump agreed that only those with “sniffles” or a sore throat should be tested.

But studies have shown that many infected people never present symptoms and public health experts have called for enough testing to reveal the asymptomatic carriers of the disease.

“We’re testing more people per capita than South Korea, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Sweden, Finland and many other countries,” Trump said Monday.

He is correct, according to Our World in Data. The U.S. trailed all those countries except Japan and the U.K. in per capita testing through March. It took the U.S. until mid-April to pass South Korea, which confirmed its first COVID-19 case on the same day, and until April 25 to surpass Finland.

At a Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing Tuesday, Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said surpassing South Korea was “nothing to celebrate“because that country has only lost 256 people to COVID-19, compared to the more than 80,000 deaths in the U.S.

The U.S. still trails many nations in per capita testing, including Australia, Italy, Russia, Canada, Denmark, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and Iceland.

Trump also said the U.S. has conducted more than 9 million tests, which he correctly says is the most completed by any nation. That represents a single test for less than 3% of the population.

On occasion, the president has said the U.S. has conducted more tests than all other nations combined. That boast is demonstrably untrue and easily refuted by a glance at the data. The sum of the tests completed in the next three countries with the highest totals – Russian, Germany and Italy – surpasses the tests performed in the U.S.