Asked about the coronavirus death toll reaching 200,000 in the United States on Tuesday, President Donald Trump said, “Well, I think it’s a shame."

However, the President added: “I think if we didn’t do it properly and do it right, you’d have two and a half million deaths. If you take a look at alternatives, you could have two and a half million deaths or something thereabouts. You could have a number that would be substantially more,” Trump told reporters before departing the White House on Tuesday. “And you saw my United Nations speech, China should have stopped it at their border. They should have never let this spread all over the world and it’s a terrible thing.”

The US has surpassed 200,000 coronavirus deaths, accounting for around a fifth of all Covid-19-related fatalities recorded worldwide.