What did Donald Trump claim about the pandemic on 28 Apr 2020? "And I've told you that we inherited a very broken test—a…"
Donald Trump, President of the United States ·
And I've told you that we inherited a very broken test—a broken system and a broken test, and within a short period of time, we were setting records.
There was no test to inherit. The first U.S. test for the new coronavirus was authorized in February 2020, more than three years into Trump's term, and the White House said it started from scratch.
The first U.S. test for the new coronavirus, the CDC's 2019-nCoV Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel, was authorized for emergency use by the FDA on February 4, 2020, more than three years into the Trump administration; the virus it detects was formally named SARS-CoV-2 on February 11, 2020 (FDA EUA letter to CDC, reissued Dec. 1, 2020). The White House's own fact sheet of April 27, 2020 says the administration built its testing system 'Starting from scratch' (White House).
Claim vs. the record · Pandemic
Added · Updated
The claim
- Date
- Where
- Remarks to small-business owners on the Paycheck Protection Program, East Room of the White House.
The record
Primary source (agency statement)