Comedian Kathy Griffin reported Wednesday on social media that she'd been hospitalized with “unbearably painful symptoms” of coronavirus.
However, Griffin wrote that the hospital where she was confined to an isolation ward was unable to test her for COVID-19 due to CDC restrictions.
Griffin, 59, delivered her update above a tweet from President Donald Trump, in which he claimed more people have been tested for coronavirus in the U.S. than in any other nation.
“He's lying,” Griffin wrote of Trump. “I was sent to the #COVID19 isolation ward room in a major hospital ER from a separate urgent care facility after showing UNBEARABLY PAINFUL symptoms. The hospital couldn't test me for #coronavirus because of CDC (Pence task force) restrictions. #TESTTESTTEST.”
As of Thursday morning, no additional information was available about Griffin's condition.
Despite Trump's claim, the Associated Press concluded this week that a lack of reliable testing has “crippled” the U.S. response to the pandemic.
“In the critical month of February, as the virus began taking root in the U.S. population, CDC data shows government labs processed 352 COVID-19 tests — an average of only a dozen per day,” the AP reported.
A month later, Trump is attempting to gaslight the American people by citing a meaningless statistic.
It may be true that the U.S. has since overtaken South Korea when it comes to total number of tests. But the U.S. population is more than six times larger than South Korea's, and when it comes to testing, epidemiologists go by per capita rates, not total numbers.
According to CNN, “based on the available data and the population of each country, 1 in 142 South Koreans and 1 in every 786 Americans have been tested for the coronavirus.”
“The absolute number of tests is not very meaningful,” said Jennifer Horney, founding director of the University of Delaware's epidemiology program.
Griffin's hospitalization comes just a week after her 99-year-old mother, Maggie, passed away.
