White House National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien reportedly claimed on Wednesday that China's initial "cover-up" of the COVID-19 outbreak cost the entire world two months to respond.

This amounts to an accusation that China bears responsibility for causing a global pandemic through its opaque initial handling of the disease.

According to Reuters, O'Brien made the claim at a Heritage Foundation event in Washington, citing reports that doctors in China had been silenced or put into isolation so word of the outbreak could not get out. He said, "Unfortunately, rather than using best practices, this outbreak in Wuhan was covered up."

Claiming that China's response had cost the world two months, he said had Beijing responded properly early on, the spread of COVID-19 within China and worldwide could have been dramatically curtailed.

He added that had China been cooperative from the start, the World Health Organization and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could have quickly put teams on the ground to analyze the situation. 

He said that bold and dramatic action by U.S. President Donald Trump such as banning air travel from China had bought the United States six to eight weeks to prepare for the virus.