Deborah Birx, who is helping President Trump’s coronavirus response, said that the United States started to outpace South Korea in the number of tests it was performing.
“I just want to speak to the Americans for just a second,” Birx said during a town hall on Fox News. “We have to ensure that we still are testing. Even though probably by today we will have done more tests than South Korea did in eight weeks, in the last eight days. In the last eight days, we’ve done more testing than South Korea.”
“But we did that because we transformed the testing process, as the president spoke to,” she added.
The comment comes as South Korea has been lauded for its response to the coronavirus for its vigorous testing that has helped stem the outbreak.
So far, South Korea has done 290,000 tests, according to Birx, while the U.S. is doing 50,000-70,000 tests a day. The U.S. is larger than South Korea, which has just over 50 million people.
The U.S. has over 50,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, while South Korea has less than 10,000.
