“They did give us some pretty bad play-calling ... with regard to us, they’re taking a lot of heat because they didn’t want the borders closed, they called it wrong. They really called, I would say, every aspect of it wrong,” Trump said at a White House press conference Tuesday, CNBC reported.
Trump then criticized the organization as being “very China-centric” for condemning his Jan. 31 travel ban, adding that he is considering to stop financial aids to the WHO.
“Take a look, go through step by step. They said there’s no big deal, there’s no big problem. There’s no nothing, and then ultimately when I closed it down, they said I made a mistake in closing it down and it turned out to be right.”
The WHO began to sound the alarm on the outbreak of a new coronavirus in Wuhan, China in mid-January.
Later on January 30, it designated the COVID-19 pandemic as a global health emergency after there had been only 8,200 cases in 18 countries across the world.
The US president also said on Tuesday that Washington would put a “very powerful hold” on money it sends to the WHO. However, when asked if it was the right thing to do now, he said, “I’m not saying I’m going to do it, but we will look at ending funding.”
According to the WHO’s most recent notice of assessment, the United States was expected to pay $115,766,922 to the agency for the biennium of 2020-2021.
His criticism came as the US government has been widely blamed in the past days for some policies that interrupt other countries’ COVID-19 battle.
The local government in Berlin accused the US on Saturday of redirecting three million Germany-bound masks for its own use, in a move condemned as "modern piracy".
France’s regional leaders have also said they are struggling to secure medical supplies as American buyers outbid them.
Globally, the number of people diagnosed with the virus now exceeds 1.4 million. More than 82,500 people have died while nearly 302,300 have recovered, according to the latest data.
The United States leads all countries and territories affected by the highly contagious virus across the world with 400,540 confirmed infections as of Wednesday and the death toll of 12,857.
MNA/PR