Trump says US to 'halt' WHO funding

US President Donald Trump said Tuesday he will "halt" US funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic as the number of confirmed cases in the US surpassed 608,000.

Trump said at a news conference in the White House Rose Garden that his administration is withholding the US contribution of $400 million to the WHO and will conduct a review of the global organization's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday said in a statement it was "not the time to reduce the resources for the operations of the World Health Organization or any other humanitarian organization in the fight against the virus".

"Now is the time for unity and for the international community to work together in solidarity to stop this virus and its shattering consequences," he said.

It wasn't the first time that Trump has attacked the WHO, and on Tuesday he repeated earlier criticisms: accusing the organization of not moving quickly enough to sound the alarm over the coronavirus, of being too China friendly, and for advising the US against banning travel from China to other parts of the world amid the outbreak.

"Had the WHO done its job to get medical experts into China to objectively assess the situation on the ground and to call out China's lack of transparency, the outbreak could have been contained at its source with very little death," Trump said.

US Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said earlier Tuesday that Trump is looking to deflect blame from his own administration.

"Right now, there is a very coordinated effort amongst the White House, and their allies to try to find scapegoats for the fatal mistakes that the president made during the early stages of this virus," he said.

Murphy added: "It is just wildly ironic that the president and his allies are now criticizing China or the WHO for being soft on China when it was in fact the president who was the chief apologist for China during the early stages of this crisis."

"It is my belief that the World Health Organization must be supported, as it is absolutely critical to the world's efforts to win the war against COVID-19," Guterres said on April 8, one day after Trump criticized the WHO's response to COVID-19 and threatened to freeze US funding for it.

Established in 1948, the WHO is an autonomous agency of the United Nations and is part of the UN's Sustainable Development Group.

Lawrence Gostin, director of the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, called cutting funding to the WHO during a global health crisis "disgraceful", warning that it would cause death and even blow back on the United States.

"People will die because of Trump's disastrous decision to withdraw @WHO funding. Trump's criticism of @DrTedros is disingenuous, meant to distract from US failure to prepare for #Coronavirus," Gostin said in one of a series of tweets on Tuesday.

"During the worst public health crisis in a century, halting funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) is a dangerous step in the wrong direction that will not make defeating COVID-19 easier,"American Medical Association President Patrice Harris said in a statement Tuesday.

In February, the WHO had advised against imposing travel restrictions where the outbreak was occurring, saying it was not an effective way to combat its spread.

Trump has repeatedly pointed to his decision to impose travel restrictions on China as proof that he responded early to warnings about the dangers of the coronavirus. He said that decision saved "thousands and thousands of lives", and the WHO "fought us".

The president blamed the organization for a "20-fold" increase in cases worldwide.

Trump said Tuesday if the WHO had acted appropriately, he could have instituted a travel ban on people coming from China sooner.

But a week before Trump instituted his ban on travelers from China, he also was praising the country. On Jan 24, Trump tweeted: "China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well..."

Trump also hasn't detailed what actions his administration took to thwart the coronavirus in the US after the travel ban was announced on Jan 31 and the declaration of a national emergency on March 13.

The BBC reported on April 4 that the WHO "approved a coronavirus test in January but the US decided against using it, developing its own test instead. However, in February, when the testing kits were dispatched, some of them didn't work properly, and led to inconclusive results. Public health experts say the delay enabled the virus to spread further within the US."