Trump Claims Increase In COVID Hospitalizations Is ‘Fake News Media Conspiracy’

In a tweet on Monday morning, President Donald Trump wrote that the only reason coronavirus cases have seen an increase is because of “a fake news media conspiracy,” and that America has the most cases in the world because “we TEST, TEST, TEST.”

Trump’s tweet follows a new report by Johns Hopkins that found that the country had a weekly average of 68,767 cases per day last week, which is the highest seven-day average the United States has recorded since the pandemic began in January.

Despite testing positive and being hospitalized for the virus in early October, Trump has repeatedly continue to downplay the severity of COVID-19, He has falsely claimed that the only reason the country is seeing high levels of cases is because that we test more than other countries. Public health officials disagree and say that both the rate of positive COVID tests and hospitalizations are rising in multiple states. The overall positive testing rate has increased since just last week, from 5.2% to 6.2%, according to Johns Hopkins. As of Saturday, 34 states were seeing a minimum of a 5% increase in COVID hospitalizations.

“Too many countries are seeing an exponential increase in cases, and that’s now leading to hospitals and ICU running close or above capacity, and we’re still only in October,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, on Friday. “We urge leaders to take immediate action to prevent further unnecessary deaths, essential health services from collapsing and schools shutting again. This is not a drill.”

A model from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which has been previously cited by the White House, expects there to be over 385,000 COVID-19 deaths by February, and possibly more if states lift mask mandates.