Coronavirus: Donald Trump threatens to cut off WHO funding over agency’s handling of outbreak
- US president says World Health Organisation knew about the dangers of the coronavirus months before it took any action
- The United States is the largest contributor to the 194-member UN body
President Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened to withhold US funding from the World Health Organisation, saying the United Nations body “missed the call” and implying it knew about the dangers of the coronavirus months before taking any action.
“We’re going to put a hold on money sent to the WHO. We’re going to put a very powerful hold on it and we're going to see,” Trump said at the daily White House press briefing.
“They could have called it months earlier. They would have known, and they should have known, and they probably did know, so we’ll be looking into that very carefully.”
Asked later in the briefing whether it was wise to cut the global health agency’s funding during a pandemic, Trump denied that a decision had been made.
“I’m not saying I’m going to do it, but we’re going to look at it,” he said. “We’re going to investigate it, we’re going to look at it, but we will look at ending funding.”
The WHO first noted “a pneumonia of unknown cause” in Wuhan in late December. It declared a global health emergency on January 30 and on March 11 deemed the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.
