US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized the World Health Organization (WHO) of being very biased towards China.
He also claimed that the organization which is largely funded by the US had issued a bad advice to the country during the time of the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump also threatened to put a hold on the US funding for the organization.
“The WHO really blew it. For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look. Fortunately I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?,” he tweeted.
On January 31, the WHO had said that borders should be kept open and trade flow and movement of people should continue despite the coronavirus outbreak though all countries had the right to take measures to try to protect their citizens.
Speaking to the media in the White House on Tuesday, Trump repeated his accusations against the health organization.
“They called it wrong. They really – they missed the call. And we’re going to put a hold on money spent to the WHO. We’re going to put a very powerful hold on it and we’re going to see,” he added.
Trump had recently expressed doubt over the accuracy of the official number of confirmed coronavirus cases in China.
Referring to a US intelligence report which claims that China had under-reported the total cases and deaths it had suffered, Trump said that the numbers of confirmed coronavirus cases appear to be a ‘little bit on the light side.’
“How do we know if they are accurate? Their numbers seem a bit on the light side,” he said.