A Nobel Prize winner criticized Chinese leaders for not doing more to curb the spread of the coronavirus, accusing them of hiding the realities of the pandemic.

Mario Vargas Llosa, who won the prize for literature in 2010, said the COVID-19 virus would have been more easily contained in China and around the world if the Chinese people lived in a free society rather than a dictatorship.

"Nobody seems to warn that none of this could be happening in the world if popular China were a free and democratic country and not the dictatorship that it is," Vargas Llosa wrote in the Spanish newspaper El Pais. "At least one prestigious doctor, and maybe several, detected this virus well in advance and, instead of taking the corresponding measures, the government tried to hide the news and silenced that voice or those sensible voices and tried to prevent the news spread, as all dictatorships do."

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo echoed Vargas Llosa's sentiment on Tuesday.

“It took an awful long time for the world to become aware of this risk that was sitting there residing inside of China,” Pompeo told reporters on Tuesday. "The Chinese Communist Party had a responsibility to do this not only for Americans and Italians and South Koreans and Iranians who are now suffering but for their own people as well.”

Chinese officials have denied trying to hide facts about how the virus was born in Wuhan and say they have the situation under control. They have characterized criticisms of their response to the virus or suggestions of a cover-up as "prejudice."

So far, more than 6,000 people have died after contracting the virus, including a reported 3,200 in China.