Trump says WHO didn’t share early information about Covid-19. A new report shows that’s not the case.

https://www.vox.com/covid-19-coronavirus-us-response-trump/2020/4/19/21227175/coronavirus-trump-who-information-china-embeds-december

By Riley Beggin Apr 19, 2020, 5:30pm EDT


More than a dozen United States experts were working at the World Health Organization and feeding the Trump administration information last December as the coronavirus spread through China, according to reporting by the Washington Post.

That reporting 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. 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.

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