USA / In many ways it's good, in many ways foolish: Trump on COVID-19 testing

Washington: Just a day after the US recorded largest single day jump in coronavirus cases, US President Donald Trump said it was 'foolish' to test for the deadly infection. He was speaking at election rally in Lumberton, North Carolina on Saturday. In his speech, Trump again sought to blame huge number of coronavirus cases on testing. 

“You know why we have cases? It’s because we test so much,” the president told his rally crowd. “In a lot of ways it’s good, and in a lot of ways it’s foolish.” 

“If we tested half, cases would be half," Mr Trump said. 

It was reported on Friday that 83,000 new cases were detected in the US. This is the highest single-day jump in the US.

North Carolina is one of the states in US that has reported increase in both, number of cases and hospitalisations. The state reported its highest number of new cases in a day this week. 

During his speech in the rally Trump expressed his unhappiness over what he suggested was over-coverage of COVID-19 pandemic. 

"That's all I hear about now. Turn on television, ‘Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid’" he said.

Trump further suggested that even if a plane crashed and '500' people were dead, all news coverage was about COVID-19.

This is not the first time Donald Trump has downplayed the pandemic. In past he has gone on record to say things like Coronavirus was "just a flu". He claimed later on that the position he took at the start of the pandemic was to ensure that there was no panic in American public.