Donald Trump at a meeting in the Oval Office with Florida governor Ron DeSantis

Donald Trump declared, without evidence, that the US is “doing sooo much better than any other country in the world” in testing for coronavirus after pledging at the White House that America would “soon” have the capacity to test 5m people per day.

But on Wednesday, less than 24 hours later, he falsely claimed that he never said the US would be testing at that rate.

The president’s optimism came despite the country passing 1m cases of Covid-19 and 60,000 deaths, a grim marker that officials initially said the US wouldn't reach until August.

Within four months of the outbreak, the nation's death toll has surpassed the total deaths from conflicts leading up to and during the Vietnam War over two decades.

Mr Trump has meanwhile invoked the Defense Production Act to keep American meatpacking plants open, despite declining to do so for the sake of ventilators or personal protective equipment, as his vice president Mike Pence finds himself in hot water for refusing to wear a mask during an official visit to the Mayo Clinic medical facility in Minnesota on Tuesday.

For the third day in a row, the president met with business leaders to discuss the coronavirus response and reopening plans as states begin to preparations to "reopen" against the warnings of health officials and epidemiologists.

He also claimed that coronavirus is "going to leave" despite, even without a vaccine.

"It's gonna be eradicated," he said. "It might take longer, it might be in smaller sections. It won't be what we had."

Follow live coverage as it happened