Angry Trump chokes WHO as Covid cases top 2m mark

washington — Just as the world crossed the grim mark of two million coronavirus cases on Wednesday — with the US accounting for 30 per cent of them, President Donald Trump ordered a halt to the American funding to the World Health Organisation.

More than two million cases of the new coronavirus have been officially registered around the world, half of them in Europe, according to a tally compiled by AFP. At least 2,000,576 infections, including 126,871 deaths, have been recorded. Europe is the hardest hit continent, with 1,010,858 cases and 85,271 fatalities. The United States registered 609,240 cases, and 26,033 deaths.

Nations and health experts worldwide reacted with alarm after Trump announced he was instructing his administration to halt funding for the WHO pending a review of its role “in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus”. They warned that the move could jeopardise global efforts to stop the coronavirus pandemic.

The US is the WHO’s largest single donor, contributing between $400 million and $500 million annually in recent years.

The WHO failed in this basic duty and must be held accountable. The organisation had ‘parroted and publicly endorsed’ the idea that human to human transmission was not happening.

washington — US President Donald Trump’s move to halt funding to the World Health Organisation over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic prompted condemnation on Wednesday from world leaders as recorded global infections passed the 2 million mark.

Trump, who has reacted angrily to accusations his administration’s response to the worst epidemic in a century was haphazard and too slow, had become increasingly hostile towards the UN agency before announcing the halt on Tuesday.

He said the WHO, which is based in Geneva, had promoted China’s “disinformation” about the virus that likely led to a wider outbreak than otherwise would have occurred.

The WHO’s special envoy for the outbreak, David Nabarro, said on Wednesday that any recriminations should be left until after the virus has been defeated.

“If in the process you decide you want to declare that you’re going to withdraw funding or make other comments about the WHO, remember this is not just the WHO, this is the whole public

Donald Trump

US President

health community that is involved right now,” he said in a webinar without naming the United States or Trump.

“Every single person in the world is a public health worker now, everybody is taking responsibility, everybody is sacrificing, everybody is involved,” Nabarro said.

A US official said that Trump made the move despite pushback within his administration, especially from top health advisers.

Trump accused the WHO of failing to investigate credible reports from sources in China’s Wuhan province, where the virus was first identified in December,

Now is a time for unity in the battle to push the Covid-19 pandemic into reverse, not a time to cut the resources of the WHO, which is spearheading and coordinating the global body’s efforts. António Guterres

UN Chief

that conflicted with Beijing’s accounts about the spread.

“The WHO failed in this basic duty and must be held accountable,” he told a White House news conference on Tuesday, saying the organisation had “parroted and publicly endorsed” the idea that human to human transmission was not happening.

The United States is the biggest overall donor to the WHO, contributing more than $400 million in 2019, roughly 15 per cent of its budget. The international health body has been appealing for more than $1 billion to fund operations against the pandemic.