WASHINGTON:
US President Donald Trump has said that with more testing in countries like India and China, there would be more coronavirus cases.
Trump made the remarks while addressing a crowd at the Puritan Medical Products plant in Maine on Friday. In his opening remarks, he touted the number of coronavirus tests conducted in the US since the pandemic hit the country, which currently accounts for the highest number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the world.
“We have massively increased our testing capacity. We are for example at 20 million tests, Germany is at 4 million, South Korea is at about 3 million… Very shortly we will be over 20 million tests. Remember this, when you have more tests, you have more cases,” Trump said.
The President then went on to say: “If we have more cases, if we wanted to do testing in China or in India or other places, I promise you there”ll be more cases. “You are doing a fantastic job in getting out the swabs.”
With the biggest-ever jump of 9,887 new cases and 294 deaths in the past 24 hours, the COVID-19 tally in India reached 236,657 on Saturday, according to the Health Ministry data. The country has now overtaken Italy, which has recorded 234,531 cases.
With 1,897,239 confirmed cases and 109,127 deaths, the US currently accounts for the highest number of infections and fatalities in the world, according to a tally by the Johns Hopkins Univerity. Although the pandemic originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan last December, the country comes in the 18th position with 84,177 COVID-19 cases and 4,634 deaths.
