Trump, "Increasing Tests Leads to More Confirmed Cases" vs "This Is a False Statement"

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Choi Saeng-hye] On the 20th (local time), U.S. President Donald Trump sparked controversy by claiming during a presidential campaign rally that expanding COVID-19 testing leads to an increase in confirmed cases.

The U.S. daily The New York Times (NYT) fact-checked President Trump's remarks made at a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and reported that many of his statements were false, lacked evidence, or were misleading.

Regarding COVID-19 testing in the U.S., President Trump said, "If you test at that scale, you will find more people and more cases."

NYT pointed out that this statement is false. The U.S. has currently conducted 26 million COVID-19 tests and recorded over 2.33 million confirmed cases. However, this is still estimated to be an undercount of the actual scale of COVID-19, and the expansion of testing does not explain the soaring number of confirmed cases, NYT noted.

Additionally, Brazil has over 1 million confirmed cases, ranking second worldwide, but has conducted only 2.4 million tests. Russia has conducted 16.7 million tests but has only 577,000 confirmed cases.

Other indicators also reveal that the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S. is more severe than in other countries. In the U.S., there is one confirmed case per 21 tests, whereas in Italy, there is one confirmed case per 188 tests. Russia conducts more daily tests per capita than the U.S., but its positive rate is much lower.

President Trump also claimed at the rally, "The police said, 'They should not be outside. It is too dangerous,' and a group of crazies came to attack this city and were very violent." He added, "Our supporters were not that violent, but if they had been violent, it would have been a terrible day for the other side."

NYT evaluated that this statement lacks evidence. NYT and other reporters reported that there were almost no protests or clashes with Trump supporters inside or outside the rally venue that day.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.