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 of scientific and technological highlights of the Trump presidency. The full report did not claim that the pandemic is over.
- New coronavirus cases in the US reached an all-time high at the weekend. More than 73,000 new cases were reported on the day of the press release, according to 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 list of President Donald Trump’s accomplishments.
The pandemic has not ended, least of all in the US, where new cases 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.
On the day the press release was sent, there were just over 73,000 new coronavirus cases reported by the Johns Hopkins University cases tracker, as well as 985 deaths. October 24 saw the highest number of new cases ever recorded.
Business Insider has approached the White House to ask on what basis the claim of ending the pandemic was made, 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.
President Donald 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 case numbers were part of a "Fake News Media Conspiracy," and were only so high because of increased testing. However, new cases have increased much faster than testing since the beginning of October, as CNBC reported.
The new claim adds to the president's attempts to downplay the pandemic. Trump privately told journalist Bob Woodward that he had long been aware of how dangerous COVID-19 is, but seeks to minimise this in public.