White House coronavirus task force response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx blamed the government’s slow response to the outbreak on “probably” incomplete data provided by China.
Birx alleged that the Chinese government withheld notable information regarding the virus during Tuesday evening’s task force press briefing at the White House.
“When you talk about could we have known something different, you know, I think all of us — I mean I was overseas when this happened, in Africa, and I think when you look at the China data originally, and you said, ‘Oh well, there’s 80 million people, or 20 million people in Wuhan and 80 million people in Hubei,’ and they come up with the number of 50,000, you start thinking of this more like SARS than you do this kind of global pandemic,” she said.
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The coordinator then explained that the medical community was not expecting the magnitude of the pandemic based on the data from China. In particular, she referenced the area in which the virus likely originated, Hubei province, for having “close quarters” and implied that the number of cases reported by the country led medical experts to believe the virus was less contagious.
“So, I think the medical community interpreted the Chinese data as this was serious but smaller than anyone expected, because I think probably we were missing a significant amount of the data,” Birx continued, noting that U.S. officials have a better idea of the virus after following its spread in Spain and Italy.
Reports have circulated that China may be misrepresenting coronavirus numbers to downplay its impact.
