President Trump bashed for his 'slow down' COVID-19 testing remark

US President Donald Trump's recent remark, during his first Presidential campaign in Tulsa, Oklahoma amid COVID-19 pandemic, that he had asked officials to "slow the testing down" has lit fresh criticism from experts and his own staffers.

"Looking at it as a scoreboard is the wrong way to think about it," The Washington Post quoted Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, as saying.

"To think of it as something you can manipulate or slow down based on what the numbers look like speaks to a complete misunderstanding of what an infectious-disease response should be."

Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), House Speaker, also condemned Trump's remarks in a statement on Sunday.

Pelosi claimed that the people of America "are owed answers about why President Trump wants less testing."

"Testing, tracing, treatment and social distancing are the only tools we have to stop the spread of the coronavirus, but President Trump orders his Administration to slow down the testing that saves lives," Pelosi said in her statement.

Peter Navarro, Trump's chief trade adviser, called the US President's comments "tongue-in-cheek", while another White House official said that Trump was only joking.

Trump, while addressing the thin crowd on Saturday (local time), had said: "Here's the bad part ... when you do testing to that extent, you're going to find more people; you're going to find more cases."

"So I said to my people, slow the testing down please," he added.

25 million people have been tested for coronavirus in the US, according to Trump -- which is the main reason why the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the nation is so high.

As per the latest data by the Johns Hopkins University, the total number of positive COVID-19 cases in US stands at 2,279,879 with 119,969 people being succumbed to the disease so far.