Pompeo: Countries must ‘step up,’ provide ‘transparent’ coronavirus information to save lives

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has been critical of China’s reporting of coronavirus cases, is calling on nations to “step up” efforts to share “accurate, transparent information” to help the world fight the pandemic.

“When you hear [Trump administration officials] talk about risk, talk about fatalities, trying to think about how to model, what they need is data. They need data from Italy. They need data from China. They need data from Iran,” Pompeo told Fox News host Sean Hannity, who was hosting from Pier 90 in Manhattan where a naval hospital ship, the USNS Comfort, is docked, late Monday.

“We need every country to step up and provide accurate, transparent information,” Pompeo continued. “And if we can’t have that, if we have disinformation instead, there are more lives that will be at risk not only today but in the weeks ahead as we battle this enormous challenge.”

“We’ve asked every country to step up, tell us what they know so that the world can learn,” he added. “America will then turn around and we will share the information we get. And we’ll keep people safe not only here in the United States but all across the world.”

China is claiming that no new cases of coronavirus were reported on Monday in Wuhan city and Hubei province, which was the center of the pandemic’s outbreak. 

Its reporting, however, has been met with skepticism by administration officials and U.S. lawmakers.

Pompeo last week said China was putting “thousands of lives at risk” by withholding information.

“We have NO IDEA how many cases China really has but without any doubt it’s significantly more than why [sic] they admit to,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) wrote on Twitter Sunday.

A Chinese health official told The Wall Street Journal this week that Beijing did not include asymptomatic individuals who tested positive for the coronavirus in its counts but would do so from now on.

The U.S. death toll exceeded 3,000 on Tuesday, according to a New York Times coronavirus tracker.