Report: Trump administration received real-time information on coronavirus from Americans working at the WHO

As the novel coronavirus first emerged in China late last year, more than a dozen U.S. researchers, doctors, and public health officials were working at the World Health Organization's Geneva headquarters, relaying back real-time information on the virus and its spread to the Trump administration, several U.S. and international officials told The Washington Post.

President Trump has accused the United Nations' health agency of not clearly communicating early on how big a threat the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic was, in an attempt to protect China. Last week, he said the U.S. will halt funding to the WHO and conduct a review "to assess the WHO's role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus."

Caitlin Oakley, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), confirmed to the Post that in January, 16 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employees were at the WHO "working on a variety of programs, including COVID-19 and Ebola." She added that "just because you have Americans embedded in WHO providing technical assistance does not change the information you are getting from WHO leadership. We have learned now that WHO information was incorrect and relied too heavily on China."

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Officials told the Post that from the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, CDC staffers consulted with their WHO counterparts on the disease, and that CDC Global Disease Detection Operations Center Director Ray Arthur has participated in daily "incident management" calls, sharing information gleaned from WHO officials. That information is sent to HHS via telephone calls and written reports, one official said.

Sensitive information, including details on actions the WHO is planning on taking, was shared in a secure facility at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, the official told the Post, with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar among those receiving updates in the early days of the outbreak. Read more at The Washington Post.