Dr. Rick Bright, the federal vaccine expert who blew the whistle on a politicized coronavirus response, said that "lives are at stake" if the outgoing Trump administration does not coordinate with President-elect Joe Biden's transition team over vaccine distribution.

"Lives are at stake here," Bright, an immunologist who was recently named a member of Biden's transition COVID-19 advisory board, told ABC News chief anchor George Stephanopoulos in an interview Tuesday on "Good Morning America."

"If we miss this opportunity to coordinate now, we could experience hiccups or delays that really we don't need to see," he added. "Americans deserve a smooth transition so we can make sure to save their lives from this pandemic."

The Biden transition team planned to meet with vaccine manufacturers this week, and Bright, whose life's work has been developing vaccines, said he hoped they would provide more detailed data from their trials.

"We really do need to see the data, the full data set," he said. That data set needs to be made available to the FDA and to other scientists. President-elect Biden has said all along he’s going to let science lead the way, and so it's critical that we are able to see that in a transparent way and the best recommendations from those scientists are made for the FDA, and then that information is carried forward to the American public."

Bright said it's important to see if the full data set shows the vaccine to be safe and effective in people of all populations, because the early, interim data could just prove efficacy for a certain population.

When asked whether the Trump administration's "Operation Warp Speed" vaccine production program should get any credit for the speed with which vaccines have been developed, Bright instead credited investments in vaccine technology made under the Obama administration.

Bright is the former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, the federal agency charged with overseeing the rapid production of a vaccine to fight the novel coronavirus. He filed a whistleblower complaint in May, alleging he was ousted because he resisted pressure to allow widespread use of hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug that President Donald Trump was touting as treatment for COVID-19.

ABC News' Ben Gittleson contributed to this report.

Around 4,000 people in South Australia have been ordered to quarantine as the Australian state grapples with a fresh COVID-19 outbreak.

South Australia authorities announced five new locally-transmitted cases on Tuesday, at least four of which were officially linked to a medi-hotel in the Parafield suburb of Adelaide, where travelers arriving from abroad are required to quarantine for 14 days. Authorities said the fifth case is expected to be connected to the Parafield cluster soon, which would bring the total number to 21.

"All of these people have either no symptoms or they are very mildly symptomatic, and they have been picked up early in the course of the disease," South Australia’s chief health officer, Prof. Nicola Spurrier, said at a press conference Tuesday.

Those who have been advised to isolate are all close contacts of the cluster from the quarantine hotel and are being contacted daily by health authorities to check for symptoms. Meanwhile, at least five schools have been closed as contact tracers work to contain the outbreak, according to Spurrier.

"We've decided to take a very, very cautious approach," she told reporters, later adding that "this is a very, very worrying situation."

Thousands of people have been tested for COVID-19 in South Australia in recent days. Spurrier urged people to only get tested if they are symptomatic or if they have recently visited the areas of concern.

"We do need to prioritize our testing across South Australia," she said.

There are currently 34 active infections in the state, including imported cases. The latest cluster is the first instance of community transmission in South Australia since April.

"I need to reiterate to the people of South Australia that we are not out of the woods yet," the state's premier, Steven Marshall, said at Tuesday's press conference. "We are just at the beginning stages of dealing with this particular very nasty cluster in Parafield. We are going to get through this. But we’re going to get through it with the cooperation of every single South Australian citizen."

Austrians awoke Tuesday morning with a new tough lockdown meant to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Under the stricter measures, which will remain in place through Dec. 6, people in Austria are only allowed to leave their homes to buy groceries, to go to work if their jobs are deemed essential, to exercise outside, to go to the doctor or to help people who need assistance.

Schools across the Alpine nation have shuttered, as teaching will be done remotely during lockdown. Banks, basic food stores and pharmacies remain open but bars, hair salons, restaurants and other non-essential shops and services have been ordered closed.

"All of social and public life will be brought down to a minimum," Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said Monday, ahead of the new restrictions.

It's the second time since the start of the coronavirus pandemic that Austria has imposed a nationwide lockdown, amid rising infections across Europe. The Austrian Federal Ministry of Social Affairs, Health, Care and Consumer Protection has confirmed more than 208,000 cases of COVID-19 so far, including at least 1,741 deaths. Nearly 50,000 of those cases were reported in the past week alone.

Russia registered 442 deaths from COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, marking the country's highest single-day death toll from the disease since the pandemic began.

An additional 22,410 new cases of COVID-19 were also confirmed nationwide over the past day. Russia's cumulative total now stands at 1,971,013 cases with 33,931 deaths, according to the country's coronavirus response headquarters.

Moscow remains the epicenter of the country's outbreak and recent surge. More than a quarter of the newly confirmed cases -- 5,882 -- and nearly 17% of the new deaths -- 74 -- were reported in the capital, according to Russia's coronavirus response headquarters.

Despite the growing number of infections and deaths, Russian authorities have repeatedly said they have no plans to impose another nationwide lockdown.

The Eastern European country of 145 million people has the fifth-highest tally of COVID-19 cases in the world, behind only the United States, India, Brazil and France, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

ABC News' Alina Lobzina contributed to this report.