|
 The Twitter comments came amid warnings from state public health
officials that shortages of trained workers and materials have
limited testing capacity.
"The only reason the U.S. has reported one million cases of
coronavirus is that our testing is sooo much better than any other
country in the world," Trump said on Twitter.
"Other countries are way behind us in testing, and therefore show
far fewer cases."
A Reuters tally https://reut.rs/2WVPxuE shows the United States has
by far the world's largest number of confirmed cases at more than a
million, with total deaths topping 58,000 by late Tuesday.
Cases exceeded 3.1 million worldwide, with more than 216,000 deaths,
Reuters calculations show https://tmsnrt.rs/3cBeEYg.
TESTS FOR THOSE IN NEED
The rise pressures efforts to boost testing capacity and health
officials flagged the challenge of getting tests to those who need
them most.
"One of the problems has been is the tests getting to the people who
need them," U.S. infectious diseases expert and health official
Anthony Fauci told CNN in an interview on Tuesday.
Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases, said every American in need of a virus test should be able
to get one by the end of May or the beginning of June.
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"Everyone who needs a test, according to the way we're approaching the
identification, isolation, contact tracing - keeping the country safe and
healthy, hopefully, we should see that as we get toward the end of May, the
beginning of June," Fauci said.
The virus has taken an unprecedented toll of the U.S. economy, with a likely
contraction in the first quarter at its sharpest pace since the Great Recession,
as stringent measures to slow the virus spread almost shut down the nation,
ending the longest expansion in its history.
The number of Americans seeking jobless benefits over the past five weeks has
soared to 26.5 million, or nearly one in six U.S. workers, and the Trump
administration has forecast an April unemployment rate exceeding 16%.
(Interactive graphic tracking global spread of coronavirus: open https://tmsnrt.rs/3aIRuz7
in an external browser.)
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
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