Democratic frontrunner Joseph R. Biden, in blaming President Trump for rising unemployment Thursday, said the U.S. “has more coronavirus cases than anywhere in the world.”
His comment came despite a U.S. intelligence community report shared with the White House that has concluded China concealed the extent of its outbreak by underreporting both its total cases and deaths.
“Donald Trump is not responsible for the coronavirus, but he is responsible for failing to prepare our nation: for the months during which he continually neglected dire warnings from experts and downplayed the threat to us, and for the erratic and unacceptably slow federal response that has tragically lagged behind other countries,” Mr. Biden said in a statement. “Now we have more coronavirus cases than anywhere in the world, and that is dealing body-blows to our economy and to the welfare and well-being of millions upon millions of Americans.”
The U.S. had more than 216,000 cases of COVID-19 as of Thursday, compared with more than 82,000 in China, according to the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus resource center’s tracker. China had more than 3,300 deaths, a number widely disputed, compared with more 5,100 deaths in the U.S.
The Labor Department said Thursday that unemployment claims soared to 6.6 million last week, a record that was double the previous week’s record, as the pandemic forced the shutdown of businesses across the country.
Mr. Trump said Wednesday that he’d be happy to take a phone call from Mr. Biden offering advice on fighting the outbreak.
