Trump halts WHO funding as he shifts blame on US Covid-19 effort

President Donald Trump suspended US funding to the World Health Organisation as he sought to deflect increasing criticism of his administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump has been increasingly at odds with officials over when the US can ease restrictions and more hostile to interrogation of his strategy, particularly around the speed with which he moved to implement public health safety measures.

The US last year contributed about $553m of the WHO's $6bn budget. Trump has repeatedly failed to explain why he did nothing for six weeks after issuing travel restrictions on January 31 and the declaration of a national emergency on March 13. The American death toll has passed 26,000 with known cases in excess of 615,000.

On Tuesday he stepped up attacks on the WHO, accusing the UN body of causing "so much death" through mistakes, adding that it had been too willing to accept Chinese government assurances on the scale of the pandemic.

"With the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have deep concerns whether America’s generosity has been put to the best use possible. The reality is that the WHO failed to adequately obtain, vet and share information in a timely and transparent fashion," he told reporters at the White House.

However, Trump actually praised Beijing on January 24: "China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency." The US was in trade talks with the Asian superpower at the time.

The autocratic Communist regime has been criticised for hiding the initial outbreak, and clamping down hard on medics who tried to highlight the outbreak's severity by jailing whistleblowers.

Reports emerged on Wednesday that the country's leaders delayed notifying the population of the dangers for a week in January just as millions were about to travel for the Chinese New Year.

The WHO came under attack for saying in January that “preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission”. It has also been accused of being too deferential to China by excluding Taiwan from membership because Beijing considers it to be Chinese territory.

UN secretary general Antonio Guterres said it was "not the time" to cut funding or to question errors.

"Once we have finally turned the page on this epidemic, there must be a time to look back fully to understand how such a disease emerged and spread its devastation so quickly across the globe, and how all those involved reacted to the crisis," he said.

"The lessons learned will be essential to effectively address similar challenges, as they may arise in the future. But now is not that time … It is also not the time to reduce the resources for the operations of the World Health Organisation or any other humanitarian organisation in the fight against the virus."