First country in pandemic has higher moral obligation: Top WH official

The first country where a pandemic starts has a higher moral obligation to inform the rest of the world and maintain transparency as other countries are making decisions on the basis of that, a top White House official said on Sunday.

Deborah Birx, member of the White House Task Force on Coronavirus, made the comments during an interview to the ABC News.

It's always the first country that get exposed to the pandemic that has really a higher moral obligation on communicating on transparency because all the other countries around the world are making decisions on that, she said.

That's something that we can look into after this is over, she said.

By Sunday, the coronavirus, which originated in China, had infected more than 740,000 Americans and claimed the lives of 34,000 people in the US, the highest number of casualties for any country in the world.

I know the European countries are communicating very effectively with each other and with us. And when we get through this as a global ...