Trump threatens to freeze funding to WHO permanently

US President Donald Trump has sent a letter to the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday, threatening to pull out US funding permanently over Covid-19.

Addressed to WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the letter outlines a 30-day deadline for the body to commit to "substantive improvements" or risk losing millions and US membership altogether.

Earlier, criticising stages of the body's response since December, Mr Trump called the UN's health body a "puppet of China".

The president, who faces re-election this year and has himself been criticised for his handling of the pandemic, has blamed China for trying to cover up the outbreak and has accused the WHO of failing to hold Beijing to account.

China has repeatedly denied the allegations, arguing the country had released information "in an open, transparent, responsible and timely manner".

The threat came as the world continues to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, which has infected more than 4.8 million people globally and killed over 318,000.
 
The United States alone has reported more than 1.5 million infections and over 90,000 deaths as of 4:03 p.m. (2003 GMT), according to a count by Johns Hopkins University. Both figures are far higher than those in any other country or region.
 
Trump announced in mid-April that his administration would halt US funding to the WHO, a roundly-criticized move that many experts have said was trying to shift blames and would be counterproductive to addressing the public health crisis.
 
Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said Monday that time had been wasted in the US response.
 
"It's heartbreaking to think how much fear, how much loss, how much agony could have been avoided if the president hadn't wasted so much time and taken responsibility," Biden told a virtual event. "We got denials, delays, distraction."
 
Based in Geneva, Switzerland, the WHO is a specialized agency of the United Nations for international public health, which has played a crucial role in coordinating the global fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
 
During the ongoing World Health Assembly, many world leaders have strongly defended the WHO and voiced their support for the organization to continue its leading in the coronavirus battle.
 
Robert Redfield, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), praised the WHO in April.
 
"WHO has been a long-term and still is a great partner for us. We're going to continue to do all we can together to try to limit this," Redfield said. "We've worked together to fight health crises all around the world. We continue to do that."

(Source: BBC)