Trump says he told staff to 'slow down' coronavirus testing
President Donald Trump speaks during a roundtable on “Fighting for America’s Seniors” at the Cabinet Room of the White House June 15, 2020 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images)
TULSA, Okla. - President Donald Trump is suggesting to supporters that he has told members of his administration to slow the rate of coronavirus testing in the United States.
Speaking at a campaign rally Saturday night in Oklahoma, Trump said the United States has tested 25 million people, and far more than any other country. He also told the crowd that more testing leads to finding more cases of people who test positive.
“When you do testing to that extent, you are gonna find more people, you’re gonna find more cases," Trump said. "So I said to my people, 'Slow the testing down please.' They test and they test. We have tests that people don’t know what's going on."
Trump seemed to imply that it was bad that tests find people who are not seriously ill with or who have no symptoms of COVID-19.
"We got another one over here. The young man is ten-years-old, he's got the sniffles. He'll recover in about ten minutes. That's a case," Trump said.
Experts including those on the White House Coronavirus Task Force have said repeatedly it is important to identify even asymptomatic carriers of coronavirus, since they can still spread the virus to others.