The White House listed 'ending the COVID-19 pandemic' as one of Trump's achievements, despite record number of infections
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
- A White House press release purporting to contain scientific achievements by the Trump administration listed "ending the COVID-19 pandemic" as one.
- The release was sent to promote a report detailing scientific and technological highlights of Donald Trump's presidency. The full report did not claim the pandemic was over.
- The number of coronavirus cases recorded daily in the US reached an all-time high over the weekend. More than 73,000 new cases were reported on the day the press release was issued, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
- The press release is an extreme example of the Trump administration's repeated attempts to downplay the severity of the pandemic.
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The White House included "ending the COVID-19 pandemic" in a new list of President Donald Trump's accomplishments.
The pandemic has not ended, least of all in the US, where the number of new cases reported daily reached record levels over the weekend.
The claim was made in a press release from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released Tuesday. The release accompanied a 62-page report of scientific highlights from Trump's presidency.
The US recorded more than 73,000 new coronavirus cases on the day the press release was sent, according to Johns Hopkins University, as well as 985 deaths. Saturday marks the all-time high in daily reported US coronavirus cases — topping a record set Friday.
Business Insider contacted the White House to ask what its pandemic claim was based on but did not immediately receive a reply.
The claim was not repeated in the version of the full report accessed by Business Insider.
White House Office of Science and Technology Policy/Business Insider
The claim is a new, extreme example in a series of inaccurate statements about the pandemic from the Trump administration.
Trump has made similar claims a cornerstone of his campaign rhetoric, claiming repeatedly that the US is "rounding the turn" on the virus, despite the numbers.
On Monday, he tweeted that high US case numbers were part of a "Fake News Media Conspiracy" and were so high only because of increased testing. The number of known cases, however, has increased much faster than the pace of testing in October, as CNBC reported.
The new claim adds to the president's attempts to downplay the pandemic. Trump privately told the journalist Bob Woodward that he had long considered COVID-19 to be dangerous but sought to minimize this in public.