Coronavirus: Experts debunk Trump claims he inherited faulty test

‘This virus did not exist in the prior administration’

President Donald Trump falsely claimed that his administration inherited broken coronavirus tests, experts have said.

In February, it was revealed that government-issued tests sent out to New York were faulty and unable to provide an accurate result.

“Testing for coronavirus is not available yet in New York City,” city Department of Health spokeswoman Stephanie Buhle told ProPublica.

“The kits that were sent to us have demonstrated performance issues and cannot be relied upon to provide an accurate result,” she added.

On 30 March, Mr Trump first claimed that the first faulty coronavirus tests were inherited from the previous administration, while making an appearance on Fox and Friends.

He repeated the claim on 1 April during one of his daily briefings at the White House and elaborated on his claim on 3 April.

“And remember this: We inherited — the word is we inherited bad tests. We really inherited bad tests. These are horrible tests. And it was broken. It was all broken. And we fixed it,” the president said.

Mr Trump repeated the claim on 6 April during another briefing, saying that “initially speaking, the tests were old, obsolete, and not really prepared”.

CNN report that despite Mr Trump’s repeated claims about the coronavirus tests, the Trump administration did not inherit them.

Michael Mina, assistant professor of epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told the outlet “this virus did not exist in the prior administration”.

He added: “The technology used to test for this virus is technology that is routinely used in clinical microbiology laboratories. It is not faulty.”

Gregg Gonsalves, an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at the Yale School of Public Health, told the outlet: “He is lying. He is lying 100%. He is lying because he is trying to shift blame to others, even if the attempt is totally nonsensical.”

On Wednesday morning, former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough, the host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, criticised networks including his own for not fact-checking the president.

“He’s spreading disinformation, he’s trying to cover up all the mistakes he’s made over the past two months,” he said.

However, the White House insisted the system inherited from the previous administration has created problems. A White House spokesperson told The Independent: "The president inherited a system that was hamstrung by red tape. The president’s team has worked day and night to meet the new challenges posed by the coronavirus by cutting red tape, expediting new commercial tests, and expanding accessibility across the country."

According to a tracking project hosted by Johns Hopkins University, upwards of 419,975 people have tested positive for coronavirus in the US. The death toll has reached at least 14,262.