Trump stops aid to the WHO

Until the United States can review the World Health Organization’s response to the pandemic, it will not financially support the agency, President Donald Trump said. The WHO failed to assess early reports from Wuhan, China, suggesting the Chinese government hid the severity of COVID-19, and it “parroted and publicly endorsed” the false claim that the virus could not spread by human-to-human transmission, Trump said on Tuesday. The United States is the UN agency’s largest overall donor and contributed about $400 million last year.

Will other countries follow suit? Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison called the WHO’s support of reopening China’s wet markets, where wild animals are sold and slaughtered, “unfathomable,” adding that the organization is not “immune from criticism.” But he argued that cutting financial aid was a poor solution. Representatives of other governments, including the European Union, Germany, and New Zealand, decried the move to decrease support during a pandemic.

Dig deeper: Read June Cheng’s report on Chinese citizens’ reactions to the Chinese government’s initial cover-up of the COVID-19 crisis.