Published 07:43 IST, April 8th 2020
Trump attacks 'China-centric' WHO for Coronavirus decisions; freezes funds to it from US
Donald Trump on Tuesday said he would put a hold on America's funding to the WHO, accusing it of becoming China-centric during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
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United States President Donald Trump on Tuesday accused the World Health Organization (WHO) of becoming "China-centric" during the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic and said he would put a hold on America's funding to WHO. This comes after Trump took to Twitter earlier on Tuesday to proclaim that the global health body "really blew it."
"We're going to put a hold on money spent on the WHO. We're going to put a very powerful hold on it and we're going to see. It's a great thing if it works. But when they call every shot wrong, that's no good," Trump told reporters at his daily White House news conference.
'They've been wrong about a lot of things'
"We pay for a majority of the biggest portion of their money. They actually criticized and disagreed with my travel ban at the time I did it. They were wrong. They've been wrong about a lot of things. They had a lot of information early and they didn't want to -- they're very -- they seem to be very China-centric," Trump said lashing out at WHO during his news conference.
Trump said his administration is going to look into the US funding to the WHO. "We give a majority of the money that they get, and it's much more than the USD58 million. USD58 million is a small portion of what they've got over the years. Sometimes they get much more than that. Sometimes it's for programs that they're doing, and it's much bigger numbers. If the programs are good, that's great as far as we're concerned," he added.
'We're going to put a hold on money spent to the WHO'
"But we want to look into it, the World Health Organization, because they called it wrong. They (WHO) called it wrong. They missed the call. They could've 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, and we're going to put a hold on money spent to the WHO," Trump said.
The W.H.O. really blew it. For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look. Fortunately I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 7, 2020
However, later in the briefing, the US President told media persons "I'm not saying I'm going to do it, but we are going to look at it." As of March 8, the United States has 387,547 active cases of coronavirus. 12,291 deaths and 20,395 have been recovered as per the Johns Hopkins University data.
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(With agency inputs)
07:43 IST, April 8th 2020