Trump coronavirus adviser says some saw it as 'hoax'

The coordinator of former US president Donald Trump's coronavirus task force said she had to grapple with COVID-19 deniers in the White House and that someone gave the president "parallel" streams of data that conflicted with hers.

Defending her tenure, Deborah Birx told CBS's Face the Nation that she was at times censored by the Trump administration but denied ever withholding information.

Dr Birx said she would see Mr Trump "presenting graphs that I never made" and that "someone out there or someone inside was creating a parallel set of data and graphics that were shown to the president".

READ MORE: Coronavirus deaths top 400,000 in Trump's final hours

She added that in the White House, "there were people who definitely believed that this was a hoax".

Dr Birx did not identify the COVID-19 deniers and said she did not know who was presenting the parallel data to Mr Trump, but said she realises now that Mr Trump's coronavirus adviser Scott Atlas was providing some of it.

Dr Birx said last December that she would retire but was willing to first help President Joe Biden's team with its coronavirus response as needed.

More than 25 million people have been infected with the coronavirus and at least 418,000 people have died in the US since the pandemic

Mr Biden will formally reinstate COVID-19 travel restrictions on non-US travellers from Brazil, Ireland, the United Kingdom and 26 other European countries that allow travel across open borders, according to two White House officials.

READ MORE: Biden signs burst of coronavirus orders, requires masks for travel

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the order, also confirmed on Sunday that South Africa would be added to the restricted list because of concerns about a variant of the virus that has spread beyond that nation.

Mr Biden is reversing an order from Mr Trump in his final days in office that called for the relaxation of the travel restrictions from Tuesday.