Virginia Dem Candidate for Governor Slapped With 4 ‘Pinocchios’ Over COVID Claims

Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe is receiving “four Pinocchios” for his claim about the number of children who are in ICU beds after contracting COVID-19.

In recent weeks, the former governor has repeatedly claimed that 1,142 children are in ICU beds because they contracted the virus

During an Oct. 24 campaign event with former President Barack Obama, McAulliffe claimed, “Here in Virginia, you should understand, 1,142 of our children have been in hospitals because they got covid.”

The Washington Post’s fact-checker Glenn Kessler noted that McAuliffe has made the handling of the pandemic one of the main focuses of his campaign. However, he “frequently touts numbers — often wrong numbers about the impact on children.”

“When we first queried the McAuliffe campaign about his figures, we were told it was a slip of the tongue. Okay, we understand that, and so we passed on a fact check. But then his tongue kept slipping,” Kessler added.

He went on to note that the fact-check team “became interested in this issue when McAuliffe in the second and final debate on Sept. 28 said that there were 8,000 coronavirus cases ‘yesterday in Virginia.’”

“But when we checked the records, you had to go back to January to find a single day when a combination of confirmed and probable cases in Virginia got close to 8,000. On Sept. 27, there were fewer than 2,000 confirmed cases,” he explained.