White House national security adviser Robert O‘Brien on Wednesday criticized China‘s response to the coronavirus as a cover-up and said that Beijing cost the global community two months to respond to the outbreak.

„Unfortunately, rather than use best practices, this outbreak in Wuhan was covered up,“ O‘Brien said in remarks at the Heritage Foundation. „There‘s lots of open source reporting from Chinese nationals that the doctors involved were either silenced or put in isolation … so the word of this virus could not get out.“