Trump received ‘real-time’ information on coronavirus from Americans working at WHO: Report

NEW YORK, Apr 20 (APP):A group of U.S. experts working at the World Health Organization (WHO) provided “real-time” information about the emerging coronavirus to the Trump administration last December as the coronavirus spread through China, according to a report published in The Washington Post Monday.

That report stands in contrast with President Donald Trump’s accusations that the WHO spent late 2019 “severely mismanaging” the global response to the virus — and that it was “covering up” information to paper over China’s inability to contain Covid-19. And it comes days after the president announced he would be freezing US funding for the WHO in the midst of a global health crisis in retaliation for these alleged failings.

In fact, according to the Post, Trump administration officials helped guide WHO policy — and worked to ensure the US was informed of new coronavirus developments as soon as the international body learned about them.

A top official from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was part of the committee that advised the WHO on whether to declare a global public health emergency in late January, it was pointed out. Two US scientists were part of the WHO’s information gathering mission to China in mid-February. A CDC official has compiled daily reports of outbreaks in consultation with WHO counterparts and passed along information to higher-ups in the organization through daily briefing calls. And upcoming WHO plans and announcements were reportedly shared days in advance with top US officials like Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.

The WHO has been criticized for its handling of the pandemic — including whether the organization waited too long to declare a global emergency and if it has been too liberal in its praise for China’s response — but the Post’s report indicates that lack of early communication of the threat to the US was likely not one of its missteps.

Trump claims otherwise, telling reporters last Tuesday, “The reality is that the WHO failed to adequately obtain … and share information in a timely and transparent fashion.”

He has repeated this allegation — along with a claim the WHO didn’t want him to institute a travel ban — a number of times in recent days, seemingly in an attempt to blame the international organization for the US’s current coronavirus crisis.

Trump has been criticized for weeks over his response to the coronavirus in the US, which his critics — and most Americans — have argued was dangerously slow. While weathering this criticism, the president has increasingly looked to the WHO as a party to blame for any of the US coronavirus shortcomings.

Trump’s objections with the organization’s role seemed to begin in late January, when top officials in the WHO said governments don’t need to “unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade” to stop the spread of the disease, after Trump announced he would be partially banning travel from China. The organization didn’t directly criticize the US, which wasn’t the only country imposing travel restrictions at the time.

“Travel restrictions can cause more harm than good by hindering info-sharing, medical supply chains and harming economies,” said the World Health Organization director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, at the time.

In early April, faced with growing scrutiny over his early response, Trump became increasingly explicit in his critiques of the organization, tweeting that the WHO “really blew it.”

“For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric,” he wrote. “We will be giving that a good look.”

Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, and Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration under Trump, criticized its handling of China’s data and transparency. Gottlieb told Face the Nation, “Going forward, the WHO needs to commit to an after-action report that specifically examines what China did or didn’t tell the world and how that stymied the global response to this.”

The WHO may continue to be a scapegoat for the Trump administration, but experts have urged him not to take it out on an agency they largely agree has avoided major missteps.

“How can you threaten to withdraw funding from the world’s leading global health agency in the midst of a pandemic, with tens of thousands of people dying” Lawrence Gostin, a professor at Georgetown University and a past critic of WHO’s director-general, was quoted as saying. “It’s utterly irresponsible.”