President Donald Trump says that it is a “badge of honour” that the the US has more cases of the coronavirus than any other country.
Speaking at a cabinet meeting this afternoon, the president put the high figure down to the volume of Covid-19 tests being carried out.
“When we have a lot of cases, I don’t look at that as a bad thing — I look at that in a certain respect as being a good thing because it means our testing is much better. ... So I view it as a badge of honour, really,” he said.
Mr Trump added that this was “a great tribute to the testing and all of the work that a lot of professionals have done.”
The US has conducted 11.28 million tests for the coronavirus, according to figures updated on Monday by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
A total of 1.59 million cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed — approximately 14 per cent of those tested.
More than 91,000 American deaths have been officially recorded as directly caused by the virus.
The president brought up the topic of testing in his response to a question about whether he was considering a travel ban on Latin America, specifically Brazil which now has the third highest number of cases in the world after the US and Russia.
Initially responding that the administration was considering a travel ban, Mr Trump continued: “We hope that we’re not going to have a problem. The governor of Florida is doing very, very well testing — in particular Florida, because a big majority come in to Florida. Brazil has gone more or less herd, and they’re having problems.”
“I worry about everything, I don’t want people coming in here and infecting our people,” he continued. “I don’t want people over there sick either.”
