Trump asks WHO to demonstrate 'independence' from China; warns of quitting UN body

In an ultimatum to the WHO, US President Donald Trump has said he would "reconsider" America's membership of the UN health body and threatened to "permanently freeze" the funding to it if it failed to demonstrate its "independence" from China in the next 30 days.

Trump halted America's funding of up to USD 500 million annually to the World Health Organisation last month while a review was being done to assess its role in "severely mismanaging and covering up" the spread of the deadly coronavirus when it first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

In a four-page letter to WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom, Trump said, "It is clear the repeated missteps by you and your organisation in responding to the pandemic have been extremely costly for the world. The only way forward for the WHO is if it can actually demonstrate independence from China."
On January 14, the WHO gratuitously reaffirmed China's now-debunked claim that the coronavirus could not be transmitted between humans, stating: "Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCov) identified in Wuhan, China."
On January 28, after meeting with President Xi in Beijing, you praised the Chinese government for its "transparency" with respect to the coronavirus, announcing that China had set a "new standard for outbreak control" and "bought the world time."