US President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced halting America’s funding of the World Health Organization while a review is being conducted to assess its role in “severely mismanaging and covering up” the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
The Trump administration has accused WHO of taking side with China in the coronavirus outbreak that has brought America’s economy to a standstill.
While China and EU countries have slammed the US President’s decision, UN chief Antonio Guterres said it “not the time” to reduce resources for the WHO as it is fighting the Covid-19 pandemic.
Covid, which originated from Wuhan in China’s Hubei province in November, has so far killed over 1,19,000 people globally, including more than 25,000 in the US.
“Today I am instructing my administration to halt funding of the World Health Organization while a review is conducted to assess the World Health Organization’s role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus. Everybody knows what has gone on there,” Trump said at his daily White House news conference on Covid.
American taxpayers provide between USD400 million and USD500 million per year to the WHO, in contrast, China contributes roughly USD40 million a year and even less, he said.
“As the organization’s leading sponsor, the United States has a duty to insist on full accountability, one of the most dangerous and costly decisions from the WHO was its disastrous decision to oppose travel restrictions from China and other nations,” Trump alleged.
“They were very much opposed to what we did, fortunately, I was not convinced and suspended travel from China saving untold numbers of lives...Thousands and thousands of people would have died,” he said.
The world, he asserted, depends on the WHO to work with countries to ensure that accurate information about international health threats is shared in a timely manner. “The WHO failed in this basic duty and must be held accountable,” he said.
The president alleged that WHO failed to investigate credible reports from sources in Wuhan that conflicted directly with the Chinese government’s official accounts. There was credible information to suspect human-to-human transmission in December 2019, which should have spurred the WHO to investigate and investigate immediately, he observed.
“Through middle of January it parroted and publicly endorsed the idea that there was not human-to-human transmission happening despite reports and clear evidence to the contrary,” he said.
According to Trump, the delays the WHO experienced in declaring a public health emergency cost valuable time. “More time was lost in the delay it took to get a team of international experts and to examine the outbreak...,” he added.
The inability of the WHO to obtain virus samples to this date has deprived the scientific community of essential data. New data that emerges across the world on a daily basis points to the unreliability of the initial reports and the world received all sorts of false information about transmission and mortality, he said.