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Fact check: Are American coronavirus tests better?

“Our testing is also better than any country in the world,” Trump bragged.

In fact, some of the initial coronavirus tests sent out to states were seriously flawed – some did not even work. Part of the problem came from the CDC insisting it would manufacture the tests itself.

Other countries – after their first coronavirus case – swiftly asked private companies to develop their own tests. South Korea, which recorded its first case on the same day as the US, did so within a week

The US only allowed laboratories and hospitals to conduct their own tests on February 29, almost six weeks after the first case was confirmed.

“The federal agency shunned the World Health Organization test guidelines used by other countries and set out to create a more complicated test of its own that could identify a range of similar viruses,” ProPublica reported.