White House says Washington Post trying to have it both ways with coronavirus testing expectations

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Tuesday slammed The Washington Post for trying to have it both ways on whether the U.S. should use South Korea as a model for U.S. coronavirus testing.

"And let's note that South Korea was the gold standard for testing," McEnany said during a White House press briefing. "In fact, on March 13, The Washington Post headline was 'South Korea is doing 10,000 coronavirus tests a day. The U.S. is struggling for even a small fraction of that.'

"And here we are on May 11, with a Washington Post headline, 'The administration keeps bragging that the U.S. testing now is better than South Korea's was a month ago.' So you can't demand that we reach South Korea and then say that we're 'bragging' when we do. This is a moment where the American private sector succeeded. This administration mobilized that testing. Every state is better off than South Korea at this moment, and that is a very good thing and something to be celebrated because it's American innovation at its best."

The Trump administration announced that the United States is conducting roughly 300,000 coronavirus tests a week.

"The fact that we can say we're doing double that of any other country, the fact that we can put up that graph that shows South Korea as a small, little red bar of testing-per-capita, and every bar beside it is an American state or territory outdoing what South Korea has done," she said.

McEnany said cautiously reopening the country would alleviate other problems separate from the coronavirus. She said data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration showed a 1,000% increase in hotline calls during April, and that other data showed appointments for screening for cancer of the colon, cervix and breast were down 86% and 94% in March. 

"There are real consequences for that," McEnany said. "The consequence of that is this: according to the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science, a total of 80,000-plus diagnoses of five common cancers in the United States are projected to be missed or delayed during the three-month period of early March to early June, which is why this president has always said, 'Go to your doctor. Do your screenings, there's a way to safely do this.' "

McEnany also took issue with  "funny numbers" from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), which she said she discussed with White House Coronavirus Task Force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx.

"Elizabeth Warren erroneously said there were 25,000 new cases today, in fact there were less than 20,000," McEnany said. "Senator Warren said there were 2,000 deaths, in fact, there have been less than 1,000. I spoke with Dr. Birx about that. So I'd encourage our Democratic colleagues, and all Americans, to make sure we're putting out there good information, because it does have consequences. I think it's unfair to the American people to give inflated case numbers and mortality numbers because it leads to those same Americans making the decision to not get a mammogram, to not have the cancer screening they need."

In audio recording of the hearing, Warren seems to ask whether the U.S. has about 25,000 new infections a day and more than 2,000 deaths a day – not "today." And the task force's Dr. Anthony Fauci seem to agrees with the numbers.