Donald Trump ordered a freeze on funding for the World Health Organization for “mismanaging” the coronavirus crisis, as world leaders weighed easing lockdowns that threaten to tip the global economy into a second Great Depression.
The death toll from the pandemic has topped 125,000, with nearly two million people infected by the disease that has upended society and changed lives for billions confined to their homes around the globe. World leaders are agonising over when to lift lockdown measures to jump-start devastated economies but still avoid a second wave of infections. And with the world battling to get on top of the pandemic, the US President fired a broadside at the WHO and halted payments that amounted to $400 million last year. Funding would be frozen pending a review into the WHO’s role in “severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus,” said Trump, who accused the Geneva-based body of putting “political correctness above life-saving measures.” The outbreak could have been contained “with very little death” if the WHO had accurately assessed the situation in China, where the disease broke out late last year, charged Trump. Beijing hit back, saying the move was bad for the global fight.
“The current global epidemic situation is grim. It is at a critical moment. This US decision will weaken WHO’s capacities and undermine the international cooperation against the epidemic,” said Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian. Trump also earned a rebuke from the head of the UN and entrepreneur Bill Gates who tweeted that cutting funding was “as dangerous as it sounds.” The president’s controversial attack came as the US counted a record of 2,228 victims over the past 24 hours, according to Johns Hopkins University. Nevertheless, Trump vowed to reboot large sections of the world’s top economy “very soon,” saying the US would reopen “in beautiful little pieces”, with the hardest-hit areas such as New York taking slightly longer. The International Monetary Fund laid bare the scale of the economic catastrophe, saying the “Great Lockdown” could wipe $9 trillion from the global economy in its worst downturn since the 1930s Great Depression. Underlining the point, Europe’s powerhouse, Germany, has been in recession since March, the government there said Wednesday. The virus-hit Chinese economy, second only to the US in size, likely contracted for the first time in around three decades in the first quarter, according to an AFP poll of economists.