US President Donald Trump has threatened to freeze American funding to the World Health Organization (WHO), saying the international group had “missed the call” on the coronavirus pandemic, which has so far left more than 82,000 dead around the world.
Trump said on Tuesday that the international group had “called it wrong” on the virus and that the organisation was “very China-centric” in its approach, suggesting that the WHO had gone along with Beijing’s efforts months ago to minimise the severity of the outbreak.
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Trump first declared that he would cut off funding from the United States for the organisation, before backtracking and saying he would “strongly consider” such a move.
Trump’s conservatives allies have also increasingly criticised the WHO, accusing the organisation of relying on faulty data from China about the pandemic.
Last week, Republican Senator Marco Rubio, called for the resignation of WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, saying “he allowed Beijing to use the WHO to mislead the global community.”
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric rejected the criticism of the UN agency.
“For the Secretary-General (Antonio Guterres) it is clear that WHO, under the leadership of Dr Tedros, has done tremendous work on COVID, in supporting countries with millions of pieces of equipment being shipped out, on helping countries with training, on providing global guidelines – WHO is showing the strength of the international health system,” he told reporters.
Dujarric added that the WHO had also recently done “tremendous work” in putting its staff on the front lines to successfully fight Ebola, an infectious and often fatal disease, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The WHO did not respond to a Reuters news agency request for comment on Trump’s remarks.
The WHO has praised China for its transparency on the virus, even though there has been some reason to believe that more people died of the disease, also known as COVID-19, than the country’s official tally.
“They should have known and they probably did know,” Trump said of WHO officials.
Throughout his presidency, Trump has voiced scepticism towards many international organisations and has repeatedly heaped scorn on the WHO.
In its most recent budget proposal, in February, the Trump administration called for slashing the US contribution to the agency to $57.9m, from an estimated $122.6m.
The WHO’s current guidance does not advocate closing borders or restricting travel, although many nations, including the United States, have taken such steps.
The WHO declared COVID-19 a public health emergency on January 30, nearly a month before Trump tweeted that “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA” and a full 43 days before he declared a national emergency in the US.
Health experts have suggested that the weekly death totals will reach a new high in the US this week. Almost 13,000 people have died from the virus in the country as of Wednesday morning.
Trump has also played down the release of January memos from a senior adviser warning of a possible coronavirus pandemic, saying he had not seen them at the time.
