Data failures, bureaucracy, politics hindered initial U.S. COVID-19 response: former government coordinator

WASHINGTON, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Issues with data collection and testing, slow communication and interpersonal conflicts within the Trump administration hurt the initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, former White House Coronavirus Response Task Force Coordinator Deborah Birx has written in her new book.

Birx revealed her struggle to get through to an administration unprepared for the pandemic and then U.S. President Donald Trump throughout her book, which titled "Silent Invasion: The Untold Story of the Trump Administration, COVID-19, and Preventing the Next Pandemic Before It's Too Late," which was published Tuesday.

"Any other president would have wanted to know just how bad things were going to get and what could be done to prevent the worst case," Birx wrote of her early days on the task force in 2020.

"Except, this wasn't any other president or any other White House. This was President Trump and the Trump White House. I was standing on constantly shifting sand, among political players I didn't know and a president who apparently liked his news served good and upbeat, or not at all," she wrote in the book.