President Trump cast doubt upon the World Health Organization’s mortality rate for the coronavirus, speculating that it may actually be much lower than estimated.
The WHO announced that 3.4% of COVID-19 patients worldwide have died from the illness as of Tuesday. But, the president claimed the mortality rate reported from the WHO was inflated during a Wednesday night interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity.
“Well, I think the 3.4% is really a false number,” Trump said. “Now, this is just my hunch, but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this, because a lot of people will have this, and it’s very mild. They’ll get better very rapidly. They don’t even see a doctor. They don’t even call a doctor. You never hear about those people.”
As of Wednesday night, Washington and parts of California had declared states of emergency, citing the outbreak. Meanwhile, the United States had seen 150 confirmed cases of the virus and 11 deaths, bumping the coronavirus mortality rate in the country to 7.3%.
“If, you know, we have thousands, or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by sitting around, or even going to work, some of them go to work, but they get better,” the president added. “And then when you do have a death … you know, all of a sudden it seems like 3% or 4%.”
Because the U.S. is behind other countries in testing citizens for the virus, there may be additional undiagnosed cases that could drive down the mortality rate.
“So I think that number is very high,” he concluded. “Personally, I’d say the number is way under 1%.”
