Monday, during an interview with Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo explained the dangers of China and others not being upfront with COVID-19/coronavirus data.

The nation’s top diplomat warned if countries like China insisted on spreading “misinformation,” more lives would be at risk.

“President Trump and I have been committed to making sure that we had the best data available,” he said. “When you hear Drs. Fauci and Birx 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. We need every country to step up and provide accurate, transparent information. 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,” Pompeo continued. “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.”

Pompeo urged cooperation from other countries, including the Chinese.

“What we’ve been looking for here all along is we simply want to make sure we understand what’s happened so that we can prevent the loss of life moving forward,” Pompeo added. “We’re looking to cooperate with every country. We’d love to cooperate with the Chinese as well to get the right information so that we can do all that’s needed to find therapeutics, to find the vaccine, to do everything we can to reduce the risk that there will be more lives lost as the world moves forward.”

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor