Trump blasts WHO over coronavirus, threatens to cut off US funding for the International Organization

WASHINGTON, (ST)- US President Donald Trump has threatened to pull back funding to the World Health Organization, accusing it of dealing in a wrong way with the coronavirus issue.

According to the Associated Press, Trump said the international group had “called it wrong” on the virus and that the organization was “very China-centric” in its approach, claiming that “the WHO had gone along with Beijing’s efforts months ago to minimize the severity of the outbreak.”

Trump, who first declared that he would cut off U.S. funding for the organization, backtracked and said he would “strongly consider” such a move.

 In an attempt to defend his failure in confronting the outbreak of coronavirus in the early days of the crisis, Trump played down memos written by Peter Navarro, a senior White House adviser, that represented an early warning of a possible coronavirus pandemic, saying he had not seen them at the time.

The memos warned that the coronavirus crisis could cost the United States trillions of dollars and put millions of Americans at risk of illness or death, the Associated Press said.

Hamda Mustafa