WHO chief urges end to ‘politicisation’ of virus

Please don’t politicise this virus,’ urged World Health Organisation (WHO) director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus a day after US president Donald Trump tried to pin blame on the WHO for thousands of American deaths from the coronavirus.

Trump accused the WHO of having ‘called it wrong’ and threatened to pull funding. Ghebreyesus gave a stern warning to those seeking to score political points amid the pandemic: ‘If you want to have many more body bags, then you do it. You have many other ways to prove yourselves,’ he said. ‘This is not the one to use for politics, it’s like playing with fire’

Mr Trump said he would consider ending US funding for the UN agency.

The president accused the WHO of being “very China-centric” and said they “really blew” their pandemic response.

Dr Tedros has now dismissed the comments, insisting: “We are close to every nation, we are colour-blind.”

After first attacking the WHO on Tuesday, President Trump renewed his criticism at his press briefing on Wednesday, saying the organization must “get its priorities right”. He said the US would conduct a study to decide whether the US would continue paying contributions,

Also answering questions at the briefing on Wednesday evening, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the administration was “reevaluating our funding with respect to the World Health Organization.

“Organisations have to work. They have to deliver the outcomes for which they were intended,” Mr Pompeo said.

Covid-19 first emerged last December in the Chinese city of Wuhan, which has just ended an 11-week lockdown.

An advisor to the WHO chief earlier said that their close work with China had been “absolutely essential” in understanding the disease in its early stages.

Read more via BBC