Sorry, Mr. President, America’s testing capacity isn’t “unrivaled”

Enlarge / Donald Trump speaks at a Rose Garden press briefing on Monday, May 11. (credit: Oliver Contreras/Sipa/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

President Donald Trump believes that America is the world's champion when it comes to coronavirus testing.

"In the span of just a few short months, we've developed a testing capacity unmatched and unrivaled anywhere in the world, and it's not even close," Trump said in a Monday press conference. He noted that daily testing has risen from around 150,000 per day three weeks ago to around 300,000 per day this week and that the US was on track to surpass 10 million tests this week (we reached that milestone on Thursday).

Trump is correct in one respect: the US has performed more coronavirus tests than any other country with the possible exception of China. But by most other measures, the American testing effort is mediocre at best.

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