US President Donald Trump threatened to cut US funding to the World Health Organisation, accusing it of bias toward China during the coronavirus pandemic. Trump told reporters he was "going to put a very powerful hold on" funding to WHO, the UN body whose biggest funding source is the United States. According to Trump, the WHO "seems to be very biased toward China. That's not right."
Trump asked why the WHO had given "such a faulty recommendation", apparently referring to the UN body's advice against curtailing international travel to stop the virus which first spread from China. "Fortunately I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on," Trump wrote, referring to his decision to ban travel from the country.
Trump and the Chinese government have been locking horns ever since the coronavirus pandemic started. On March 20, the United States National Security Council (NSC) had tweeted: “#China and #Russia are working around the clock to spread disinformation about the origins and spread of the Chinese virus, while the United States and Europe are focused on solving the problem and taking care of our people.”
The same day, responding to the tweet, US president Donald Trump reiterated the statement, saying that the world is "paying a big price" after China hid information on coronavirus. "It would have been much better if we had known about this a number of months earlier. It could have been contained to that one area in China where it started," Trump said.
"The world is paying a big price for what they [China] did and the world is paying a very big price for not letting them [information about coronavirus] come out," Trump said, according to the agency.
"If people would have known about it, it could have been stopped in place. It could have been stopped right where it came from China, if we would have known about it, if they would have known about it. But now the whole world almost is inflicted with this horrible virus and it's too bad," he said.
Washington and Beijing have been embroiled in a bitter blame game for COVID-19. The pandemic comes at a time of wide-ranging tension between the United States and China on issues from trade to human rights to Beijing's military buildup.
The US had summoned China's ambassador after a senior official in Beijing tweeted that the US military started the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, in tweets last week in both Mandarin and English, suggested that "patient zero" in the global pandemic may have come from the United States—not the Chinese metropolis of Wuhan, where cases were first reported in late 2019. "It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation," tweeted Zhao, who is known for his provocative statements on social media.