U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams refuted a Sunday morning tweet by President Donald Trump blaming his government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agency for the astronomically high number of coronavirus deaths in the U.S., calling the staggering figure, which just topped 350,000, “fake news.” Despite falling in line with many other countries that count people who test positive for the virus at the time of death as a COVID-19 death, he argued in a tweet an apparent contradiction to his theory that the U.S. toll was inflated by accusing other countries of underreporting their death toll. “The number of cases and deaths of the China Virus is far exaggerated in the United States because of @CDCgov’s ridiculous method of determination compared to other countries, many of whom report, purposely, very inaccurately and low,” he wrote, adding, “When in doubt, call it Covid.” Fake News!”

Speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper, Adams flat out denied Trump’s accusation in a rare contradiction. “From a public health perspective, I have no reason to doubt those numbers,” Adams said when asked about Trump’s claim. “And I think people need to be very aware that it’s not just about the deaths, as we talked about earlier. It's about the hospitalizations, the capacity. These cases are having an impact in an array of ways and people need to understand there’s a finish line in sight, but we've got to keep running toward it.”

Trump also tweeted another arguable claim that, despite widespread criticism for hiccups in the vaccine rollout program, the government had delivered the vaccines on time, writing, “The vaccines are being delivered to the states by the Federal Government far faster than they can be administered!”