White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Deborah Birx said the slow coronavirus response from global governments came because China’s public data on the virus was inaccurate.

Pandemic expert Dr. Deborah Birx says U.S. officials initially responded to the coronavirus outbreak the way that they did because they thought it was going to be “more like SARS” and not a “global pandemic” *BECAUSE* “we were missing a significant amount of the data” from China pic.twitter.com/yFkzqqDBHh — Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) April 1, 2020

“The medical community interpreted the Chinese data as, this was serious, but smaller,” she said. “Because, I think, probably we were missing a significant amount of the data.”

Birx and fellow task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci also announced the U.S. is anticipating between 100,000 and 240,000 deaths before the pandemic ends. (RELATED: Ted Cruz To Stay Home In Texas For One Week After Saying He Met Person With Coronavirus At CPAC)

Fauci later said that the sobering projection could change – for better or for worse – with the addition of new data.

Birx’s statement comes the amid confirmation that China hasn’t been counting asymptomatic infections of the coronavirus in its public numbers. China initially suppressed all news of the disease when it originated in Wuhan, until a whistleblowing doctor took action.

A March 11 study found that if China had taken action on the virus three weeks sooner, the number of cases across the globe would be 95 percent lower.