The first question of the night came from Nicholas Freden, an attorney from Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, who asked how Biden would have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic when it began and what following the science looked like to Biden going forward.

The former vice president responded by what he called for beginning in February, including keeping pandemic investigators on the ground in China and utilizing the Defense Production Act earlier.

Trump "missed enormous opportunities and kept saying things that weren't true," Biden said.  "It's going to go away by Easter. Don't worry about it. It's going to all -- when the heat -- when the summer comes, it's all going to go away like a miracle. He's still saying those things."

Stephanopoulos pressed Biden, asking why he didn't call for masks in January and February, early in the pandemic. The former vice president responded by saying he started wearing masks and social distancing in March when scientists, like Dr. Anthony Fauci, began to recommend it.

" What we should be doing now, there should be a national standard," Biden said. "Remember what the president said to the governors. Well, they're on their own, it's not my responsibility, the governors can do what they need to do, not my responsibility. It is a presidential responsibility to lead. And he didn't do that."

A voter asked Biden what his administration would do to deal with COVID-19 that hasn't been done by the current administration.

"There should be a national standard ... it is the presidential responsibility to lead," Biden said.

Trump seized on the announcement from C-SPAN earlier that it has indefinitely suspended its political editor Steve Scully after Scully admitted to lying about his Twitter feed being hacked when confronted about a tweet to former Trump communications director Anthony Scaramucci.

Scully was the surprise pick to moderate the town-hall debate that was supposed to happen Thursday evening, until Trump rejected a virtual format and Biden signed on to the ABC News Town Hall instead.

Moments after the Associated Press published an apology from Scully, Trump tweeted he was "right again!" and claimed Scully's lie showed the debate was "rigged" and that his campaign was "not treated fairly by the 'Commission.'"

A week ago, after Trump called Scully a "never-Trumper," Scully tagged Scaramucci's Twitter account in a tweet -- in what looked like a direct message gone wrong -- and asked, "should I respond to Trump."

Scaramucci, a fierce critic of the president, tweeted back his advice: "Ignore. He is having a hard enough time. Some more bad stuff about to go down."

Scully said once he saw the controversy the exchange had created, he falsely claimed his Twitter account had been hacked.

"These were both errors in judgement for which I am totally responsible for," Scully said. "I apologize."

Early voting has already begun in 48 states plus Washington, D.C., with data continuing to hit record numbers across the country.

In the states reporting data, at least 17.8 million votes have been cast in the 2020 general election and at least 80.7 million ballots have been requested in early voting states.

The large early voting numbers are due to the coronavirus pandemic as well as an increase in voter interest.

However, though millions of ballots have been requested, it's unclear how many might sit at home unmarked.

Seven states -- California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington -- have an all-mail ballot election, meaning every registered voter is automatically sent a ballot.

By Friday, all 50 states plus Washington, D.C., will have some form of early voting underway.

-ABC News' Kelsey Walsh

BIDEN'S CLAIM: "All the way back in the beginning of February, I argued that we should be keeping people in China. And we had set up, in our administration, a pandemic office within the White House."

FACT CHECK: Biden's comments about what his administration would have done differently at the beginning of the pandemic were lacking some context.

What Biden appeared to be referencing was the United States having Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staff based in China in order to monitor the spread of the virus. Reuters reported earlier this year that the Trump administration had cut the number of staff in China by more than two-thirds, mostly over the previous two years in the agency's Beijing office.

In a Democratic presidential primary debate in February, Biden referred to funding cuts for public health agencies. "What I would do immediately is restore the funding," he said then. "I would be on the phone with China and making it clear, we are going to need to be in your country."

His answer at the town hall Thursday night did not provide that full context, though, which made it sound like he could have been referring to whether he supported putting restrictions on travelers coming from China to the United States, a step President Donald Trump took at the beginning of February.

It was not until the beginning of April that Biden's campaign confirmed in a statement to CNN that he supported Trump's decision to bar some travel from China, because the move was supported by scientists and medical experts.

-ABC News' John Verhovek