Romney says U.S. coronavirus testing record is ‘nothing to celebrate’
During a Senate committee hearing on the current pandemic, Sen. Mitt Romney compared testing rates in the United States with those in South Korea and said the U.S. record is “nothing to celebrate.”
Video Transcript
MITT ROMNEY: Admiral Giroir, I'm going to take off where Senator Hassan spoke. I understand that politicians are going to frame data in a way that's most positive politically. Of course, I would expect that from admirals, but yesterday you celebrated that we had done more tests and more tests per capita even than South Korea, but you ignored the fact that they accomplished theirs at the beginning of the outbreak while we treaded water during February and March. And as a result, by March 6 the US had completed just 2,000 tests whereas South Korea had conducted more than 140,000 tests. So partially as a result of that, they have 256 deaths, and we have almost 80,000 deaths.
I find our testing record nothing to celebrate whatsoever. The fact is their test numbers are going down, down, down, down now because they don't have the kind of outbreak we have. Ours are going up, up, up as they have to. I think that's an important lesson for us as we think about the future.
