WHO defends China focus after Trump criticism

LONDON: The World Health Organisation (WHO) has denied Donald Trump’s claims that it is biased towards China during the coronavirus pandemic, insisting the country’s status as the perceived origin of the outbreak makes it crucial in combating the disease globally.

Dr Bruce Aylward, senior adviser to WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, dismissed comments by the US President on Tuesday evening describing the organisation as “very China-centric”.

Trump also threatened to halt funding to the international public health body and said it had “missed the call” to outline the seriousness of the disease in the early days. In January, the president said America was “going to be fine” as the disease took hold.

In a virtual press conference, Dr Aylward hit back at Trump’s claims of a pro-Chinese bent, 100 days after the WHO was alerted to the “mystery illness” in the country when a handful of people fell ill in the city of Wuhan.

Dr Aylward said: “(China) is such an important partner of the international crisis that we’re facing right now — this virus appears to have emerged out of Wuhan. It’s absolutely essential that we work closely with China to understand this disease.

“It was absolutely critical in the early part of this outbreak to have full access to China, work with the Chinese to understand this. It has just been such an important part of managing what is an extraordinarily devastating public health crisis.”

He added: “That’s the approach we would take with every single country. It’s got nothing to do with China specifically, it happened to be the place where this started.”

During a press briefing at the White House on Tuesday night, President Trump accused the WHO of being “wrong about a lot of things”. He said: “They (WHO) missed the call. They could have called it months earlier, they would have known, they should have known and they probably did know.”

His comments came after he previously appeared to dismiss the impact of Covid-19. Speaking on January 22, as Wuhan went into lockdown over the outbreak, Trump said: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”