President Donald Trump said it is "a badge of honour" that the United States has the highest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in the world.

Speaking at the White House, Trump told reporters: "By the way, you know when you say that we lead in cases, that's because we have more testing than anybody else."

"So when we have a lot of cases, I don't look at that as a bad thing, I look at that as, in a certain respect, as being a good thing because it means our testing is much better."

He added: "So I view it as a badge of honour. Really, it's a badge of honour."

"It's a great tribute to the testing and all of the work that a lot of professionals have done."

Trump made his comments on May 18 while hosting his first cabinet meeting since the outbreak started in the U.s.

U.S. pulling ahead worldwide

The U.S. has 1.5 million Covid-19 cases and almost 92,000 deaths.

Russia is in second place with nearly 300,000 confirmed cases.

But Trump's claims that the U.S. is leading in tests is not accurate.

While the US has carried out more tests by volume than any other country, on a per capita basis, it is not first in the world.

Over the past week, the U.S. has been conducting between 300,000 and 400,000 tests daily.

The U.S. has conducted 12.6 million coronavirus tests by May 19.

It has been estimated that the U.S. needs more than 900,000 tests every day to safely open up again.

This is according to Our World in Data, a scientific publication based at Oxford University.

Its chart ranks the US as 16th globally in terms of tests per 1,000 people, ahead of South Korea.

However, the U.S. is behind Iceland, New Zealand, Russia and Canada.

The U.S. has also reported the most coronavirus deaths in the world.

But on a per capita basis it ranks sixth behind countries such as Belgium, the United Kingdom and France.

Response to reporter's question

Trump's latest comments was in response to a question about whether he was considering a travel ban on Latin America and Brazil, in particular.

Brazil has the third highest number of confirmed cases, following the U.S. and Russia.

The Democratic National Committee has criticised the Republican president's comments.

The DNC tweeted that the 1.5 million Covid-19 cases in the U.S. represented "a complete failure of leadership".