Trump keeps claiming the US has done more virus testing than the rest of the world combined

President Donald Trump made a number of false claims on Tuesday, including that the US has administered more coronavirus tests than the rest of the world combined.

During his daily press briefing, he said:

I’ll say it for the fifth time, we have tested more than any other country in the world, and some of the countries are very big.

I think I read yesterday a report that we’ve done more than everybody — every other country — combined.

We’ve tested more than every other country in the world even put together, that’s all I can say.

“So Trump’s claim isn’t even close to correct,” said Vox’s Aaron Rupar. And while the raw numbers tested in the US may seem impressive they ignore population size, meaning the country lags behind in terms of per-capita testing.

The US has in fact done more testing than any other individual country that reports data — the number of tests conducted in China isn’t available — it's nowhere near to testing more than all other countries combined, according to Worldometer.

Well over 20 million tests have been conducted across the world, and just over 4 million have them have been done in the US.

While Trump is hoping to reopen the American economy ASAP by portraying the US as a leader in curbing the epidemic, it seems it would not be responsible to do so in the near future.