'They're adding': Trump suggests New York City padding coronavirus death toll with unconfirmed cases
President Trump suggested New York City was inflating the numbers of residents who died of the coronavirus. Trump questioned Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio’s revised coronavirus death toll after the city added 3,778 deaths of patients that experienced COVID-19 virus symptoms but were never tested for the illness.
“I see this morning where New York added 3,000 deaths because they died, and they're now saying, rather than it was a heart attack, they're saying heart attack caused by this, so they're adding. If you look at it, that's it,” he said a White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing. "Everything we have is documented, reported. And what they are doing is 'just in case' — they're calling it this, and that's OK. That's OK," he continued before explaining why he believes numbers in the United States are higher than other countries. "But we have more cases because we do more reporting.”
Freddi Goldstein, a spokeswoman for de Blasio, blasted Trump for the comments. “These were people with names, hobbies, lives. They leave behind grieving loved ones. They deserve to be recognized, not minimized,” she told the New York Post. New York City has become the American epicenter for the virus. More than 10,000 New Yorkers died after the city revised its virus count on Tuesday to include presumptive cases. “What New Yorkers are interested in, and what the country is interested in, is that we have an accurate and complete count,” Dr. Oxiris Barbot, the commissioner of the city Health Department, told the New York Times. “It’s part of the healing process that we’re going to have to go through.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/theyre-adding-trump-suggests-new-york-city-padding-coronavirus-death-toll-with-unconfirmed-cases