President Donald Trump announced Tuesday night that he is halting funding to the World Health Organization while his administration reviews the group’s handling of the coronavirus, accusing it of bungling the response and failing to communicate the disease’s threat.
The move follows weeks of Trump’s escalating attacks on the U.N. health organization as he has sought to deflect scrutiny of his own administration’s slow response to the outbreak.
The U.S. contributes more than any other country to WHO, at more than $400 million per year. Cutting off funds to the group, which has a $4.8 billion annual budget, will be a major blow to the organization as it conducts vaccine trials, distributes test kits and advises governments around the world.
Trump on Tuesday accused WHO of “severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus” and called its opposition to U.S. travel restrictions on China in the outbreak’s early months “disastrous.”
While WHO did call such travel bans “ineffective in most situations” at the time, the group did acknowledge that they could help further public health at the beginning of an outbreak, buying countries time to “to initiate and implement effective preparedness measures.”
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