DONALD TRUMP HAS said that the United States has a lower number of deaths as a proportion of cases than “the world” and Europe. 

In an interview with journalist Jonathan Swan from news website Axios, the US president said the country has high numbers of Covid-19 cases due to testing. 

He argued that ”there are those who say you can test too much”.

“We have tested more than any other country, than all of Europe put together times two. We have tested more people than anybody ever thought of,” Trump said. 

The US has a population of approximately 330 million. As of yesterday, nearly 53 million coronavirus tests have been carried out, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

The US has recorded 155,366 deaths associated with Covid-19 and 4,711,323 confirmed cases, according to the most recent tally by Johns Hopkins University. 

This is the highest death and case rate of any country in the world. 

Trump said the situation in the United States is “under control as much as you can control it. This is a horrible plague that beset us.” 

When questioned on death rates in the US, Trump said: “The United states is lowest in numerous categories. We’re lower than the world, lower than Europe.”

The journalist clarified that this is in regard to death as a proportion of cases and said death as a proportion of population is “really bad”. 

“You have to go by the cases,” Trump said.

“What testing does is it shows cases, it shows there may be cases. Other countries test when somebody is sick, and I’m not saying they are right or wrong, nobody has done it like we have done it.”

Trump further claimed that “there are those who say you can test too much”.

When asked who said this, the president responded: “Just read the manuals, read the books.”