Donald Trump threatens to cut funding to 'China-centric' World Health Organisation
Donald Trump has threatened to stop funding the World Health Organisation (WHO) and accused it of being “China-centric” as the US saw the highest 24-hour rise in coronavirus deaths of any country.
The US president said the WHO, an international body which promotes healthcare and improves access to medicine, had “called it wrong” on the pandemic, appearing to suggest it failed to alert other countries quickly enough.
“We’re going to put a hold on money spent to the WHO. We’re going to put a very powerful hold on it and we’re going to see,” Mr Trump said during a White House briefing on Covid-19 on Tuesday evening.
He later backtracked when pressed by reporters, saying he had not yet decided to pause the funding but that “we’re going to look at it."
Such a move could harm the WHO’s ability to fund its projects moving forward. Last year the US contributed about $550 million - close to a tenth of the body’s total funding.
Hans Kluge, the WHO regional director for Europe, pushed back on Wednesday. “This is not the time to cut back on funding”, Mr Kluge said. "We are still in the acute phase of a pandemic.”
Mr Trump’s frustration with body seems in part to stem from its refusal to welcome his restrictions on travel from China - the country where Covid-19 first emerged - earlier this year.
At the time the WHO issued a statement saying “restricting the movement of people and goods during public health emergencies is ineffective in most situations and may divert resources from other interventions”.
Mr Trump has repeatedly touted the decision as proof that he understood the seriousness of the outbreak early and acted accordingly.
The president said of the WHO that “they seem to be very China-centric”, adding: “They seem to err always on the side of China. And we fund it. So I want to look into it.”
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general, has seen his past praise of China’s leadership thrust into the spotlight. A headline yesterday at the top of the US-facing Mail Online website dubbed him “China’s Dr WHO”.
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However critics have seen in the president’s broadside at a non-political body an attempt to deflect blame over his administration's handling of the crisis.
On Tuesday more than 1,800 people died from the virus in America - a figure higher than recorded in any other country for a 24-hour period.
On Wednesday, it set a new record of of 1,973 deaths, bringing the total number of US fatalities to 14,695.
More than 400,000 people have now been confirmed as having Covid-19 in the US.
Mr Trump has defended his administration’s record in tackling the outbreak, at times marking his own performance as 10 out of 10, but political pressure is mounting over whether he acted quickly enough to procure masks and other vital equipment for frontline healthcare workers.
The issue looks set to dominate the campaign for the US election, now seven months away.
But more recently the US president has backed off that attack line, acknowledging that China has suffered after talking to its president Xi Jinping.
Other Republicans including Ted Cruz, the Texan senator who ran against Mr Trump for the party’s 2016 presidential nomination, have echoed Mr Trump's WHO comments.
“The WHO has been far too willing to parrot Chinese propaganda,” Mr Cruz tweeted.
Senior WHO figures on Wednesday rebutted Mr Trump’s “China-centric” charge, crediting China with working “very hard" to identify those infected and restrict travel to stop the spread.
In a separate development, new data from US states has shown that the African-American community is being disproportionately hits by coronavirus in America.
In Chicago, African-Americans make up around a third of the population but about 70 per cent of coronavirus-related fatalities. A similar ratio is seen in the state of Louisiana.
In Michigan, African-Americans account for just 14 per cent of the population but 41 per cent of the Covid-19 death toll.
Mr Trump said the issue was a “real problem” which was showing up “strongly” in the data. Medical experts said inequalities in access to healthcare helped explain the issue.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious disease adviser, noted that pre-existing conditions such as asthma and diabetes are more prevalent among African-Americans.
In New York, the epicentre of the US outbreak, prisoners have been pictured digging graves at Hart Island. It has been used in the past to bury unidentified or unclaimed bodies.
