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Introduction: On December 31, 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO, hereafter) reported the first case of a new respiratory infection, in the city of Wuhan.This study focuses on how political communication 2.0 has contributed to prevent and protect citizens, during early stages the COVID-19 crisis, in a comparative perspective between USA and Spain. Specifically, the paper focuses during the first 90 days of 2020 (from January 1 to March 31), in the latency phases - oriented to preparedness and prevention- and of crisis outbreak. Methodology: The paper analyzes the content of the messages through the Twitter accounts of Donald Trump -@realdonaldtrump-, the White House -@ WhiteHouse-, and the CDC - @cdcgov; and Pedro Sánchez -@sanchezcastejon-, the Ministry of Health -@sanidadgob-, and the account of the Moncloa -@desdelamoncloa-. By conducting quantitative and qualitative analysis. Results: the findings show a divergent communication strategy. While the Spanish actors followed closely the guidelines of health crisis communication; in the US, only the official accounts of @WhiteHouse y @cdcgov followed those guidelines, while in President Trump´s account, it is observed a politicized communication strategy rejecting messages from public health sources. Conclusions: Political communication is an essential element in a major crisis not only for good governance and management but also for the preparation and awareness of a citizenry. This study shows that the official institutional communication strategy was appropriate in both countries and that it helped to face an unprecedented major health crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]