Trump halts U.S. funding to the World Health Organization

Donald Trump.
(Image credit: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

President Trump announced Tuesday that the U.S. will stop funding the World Health Organization and plans on conducting a review to "assess the WHO's role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus."

Last week, Trump threatened to freeze funding to the United Nation's health agency, accusing WHO officials of responding slowly to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak. He has also slammed the WHO for praising China's transparency on how it was handling its coronavirus outbreak and denounced the agency's Jan. 14 tweet stating that a preliminary investigation by Chinese officials found zero evidence of human-to-human transmission.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

On Jan. 30, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency, and on March 11, declared it a pandemic. In the early days of the outbreak, Trump downplayed the virus, saying in February the danger to Americans remained "very low" and it would "disappear" like a "miracle." As of Tuesday evening, at least 22,200 people have died of COVID-19 in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports.

Explore More
Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.