WHO Regrets Trump Funding Halt as Coronavirus Cases Top 2mn
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16 April 2020 06:38 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Geneva - The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday, April 15, he regrets U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to pull funding for the agency, but that now is the time for the world unites in its fight against the new coronavirus.
Trump’s move prompted condemnation from world leaders as global coronavirus infections passed the 2 million mark.
The United States is the world’s worst-affected country and its coronavirus death toll topped 30,000 on Wednesday, according to a Reuters tally. The fatalities have doubled in just a week and set a record single-day increase for the second day in a row.
New U.S. cases have been rising by about 25,000 a day, down from a peak of 35,000, according to a Reuters tally.
Trump said the data suggests the nation has passed the peak of new coronavirus infections and that he will announce guidelines for reopening the economy on Thursday.
After gradually becoming more hostile toward the Geneva-based WHO, Trump accused it on Tuesday of promoting Chinese “disinformation” about the virus, saying this had probably worsened the outbreak.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference that the United States “has been a long-standing and generous friend of the WHO, and we hope it will continue to be so.”
“WHO is reviewing the impact on our work of any withdrawal of U.S. funding and we will work with partners to fill any gaps and ensure our work continues uninterrupted,” Tedros added.
Global health campaigner and donor Bill Gates tweeted that “Halting funding for the World Health Organization during a world health crisis is as dangerous as it sounds ... The world needs WHO now more than ever.”
But Washington showed no sign of softening its stance, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pressed China’s top diplomat on the need for full transparency and information sharing to fight the pandemic.
There was a sign of global unity among the Group of 20 major economies, including the United States, which agreed to suspend debt service payments for the world’s poorest countries from May 1 until the end of the year. Meeting host Saudi Arabia said this would free up more than $20 billion for them to spend on their health systems.
MONEY GOING ELSEWHERE
The United States contributed more than $400 million to the WHO in 2019, roughly 15% of its budget.
A senior administration official said Washington would stop a $58 million “assessed contribution” that it was due to pay for 2020.
The United States also traditionally provides several hundred million dollars a year in voluntary funding tied to specific WHO programs. “That money will be spent with other partners,” said a second senior Trump administration official.
The WHO has appealed for more than $1 billion specifically to fund operations against the pandemic, which reached 2 million confirmed cases on Wednesday, including more than 131,000 deaths, according to a Reuters tally.
New York City, center of the U.S. epidemic, revised its COVID-19 death toll sharply higher to nearly 11,000 - around a third of the overall U.S. total - to include victims presumed to have died of the disease but who were not tested.
But declines in hospitalizations and need for intensive care for coronavirus patients across New York state prompted Governor Andrew Cuomo to say on Wednesday that fears of its healthcare system becoming overwhelmed had not materialized.
Many of the hardest-hit countries have acknowledged that they are failing to register large numbers of coronavirus deaths among elderly people living in nursing homes, where testing is rare.
Data from Belgium indicated that almost half of its coronavirus-related deaths had occurred in nursing homes.
REUTERS