Trump threatens to cut WHO funding, China lifts Wuhan travel ban
WASHINGTON, United States (Update 1, 11:03 a.m.) — President Donald Trump threatened on Tuesday to cut US funding to the World Health Organization, accusing it of bias toward China, where the authorities lifted a two-and-a-half month travel ban on Wuhan, the city that spawned the global coronavirus pandemic.
As the United States suffered a record total of nearly 2,000 deaths in the past 24 hours, China reported no new deaths for the first time since the outbreak began in Wuhan in late December.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson remained in stable condition in intensive care in a London hospital, meanwhile, after being admitted on Monday, 10 days after being diagnosed with the virus.
His spokesman said the 55-year-old Conservative leader was in "good spirits," was receiving "standard oxygen treatment" and has not required a ventilator.
The shocking hospitalization of a high-profile world leader underscored the global reach of COVID-19, which has put more than four billion people -- over half of the planet -- on some form of lockdown, upending societies and battering economies worldwide.
Amid warnings that worse is yet to come, death tolls mounted from the virus that has now claimed more than 82,000 lives and infected more than 1.4 million people worldwide.
In Washington, Trump told reporters that he was "going to put a very powerful hold" on funding to the WHO, the UN body whose biggest contributor is the US, accusing it of being "very biased towards China."
"They called it wrong," he said of a WHO travel warning on China. "They could have called it months earlier."
Trump gave no details about how much money would be withheld and minutes later he said he would only "look at ending funding."
China faces criticism over the way it handled the initial virus outbreak and Trump and others have expressed doubt over the accuracy of Chinese statistics for cases and deaths.
Trump himself has been widely criticized for initially downplaying the virus, which he likened to an ordinary flu before later accepting it was a national emergency.
More than 12,800 Americans have now died from COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins University, and with nearly 400,000 cases the country has the most in the world.
A record total of 1,939 people died in the United States in the 24 hours up to Tuesday evening.
'Eye of the storm'
China lifted a travel ban on Tuesday on residents of Wuhan and reported no new deaths, but the situation remained grim elsewhere.
While other major cities around the world remained locked down, thousands of people rushed to leave Wuhan.
Train service and flights resumed and roadblocks were removed, prompting an exodus by residents wearing protective clothing and masks.
China's National Health Commission said Tuesday that no new deaths had been logged in the preceding 24 hours, the first fatality-free day since the country began publishing figures in January.
China's official tally is some 81,000 overall infections and more than 3,300 deaths but there are suspicions Beijing has under-reported the real numbers.
Britain reported 786 new deaths and New York state saw 731 in 24 hours, after Spain, France and Italy all recorded new surges in fatalities.
New research showed Britain's toll on a steeper trajectory than other nations and predicted as many as 66,000 deaths by July, far more than in Italy, which has the highest fatalities to date -- 17,127.
Paris on Tuesday banned daytime jogging to keep people from bending anti-coronavirus lockdown rules as France breached 10,000 deaths.
But there were glimmers of hope in the statistics.
Spain said its downward trend in new infections and deaths was continuing and that increases in fatalities on Monday and Tuesday were the result of weekend deaths being tallied.
Eduardo Fernandez, a 39-year-old nurse at Madrid's Infanta Sofia Hospital, said there had been fewer admissions in recent days.
"But we remain much above our usual capacity," he cautioned. "I don't know if my colleagues who are in the eye of the storm are able to see (the decrease) because the work pressure is very high."
'THIS IS RIDICULOUS'
Iran's parliament convened for the first time since late February as the country reported a drop in new infections for the seventh straight day.
In New York, the epicenter of the US outbreak, Governor Andrew Cuomo said the state appeared be nearing the peak of its pandemic but urged New Yorkers to continue staying indoors.
"I know it's hard but we have to keep doing it," he said.
A New York City funeral home director, Pat Marmo, said he was dealing with three times more bodies than normal. "It's almost like 9/11, going on for days and days and days," he said.
Despite stay-at-home orders, voters in another US state, Wisconsin, went to the polls to cast ballots in the Democratic presidential primary and local elections.
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel showed a mask-wearing woman in line to vote holding a sign bearing the message: "THIS IS RIDICULOUS."
Economic fallout
Governments are scrambling to put together rescue packages to stem the economic damage from effectively shutting down global commerce, as fears loom of a devastating recession.
The UN's International Labour Organization said 81 percent of the global workforce of 3.3 billion people are now affected by "the worst global crisis since the Second World War."
Japan, which declared a month-long state of emergency on Tuesday, has promised a $1-trillion stimulus package and Trump said he favors another massive US spending program, this time targeting infrastructure projects.
EU finance ministers were working on a deal to use the eurozone's 410-billion-euro ($447 billion) bailout fund to fight the virus but the bloc remains divided on pooling debt to issue "coronabonds."
Stock markets were up across Asia and Europe but Wall Street finished slightly lower.
The EU announced it would put up 15 billion euros to help developing countries fight the epidemic, which is only starting to spread in some of the world's poorest countries.
Follow this page for updates on a mysterious pneumonia outbreak that has struck dozens of people in China.
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says on Sunday that he had contracted COVID-19, testing positive at a key point in his flailing campaign for re-election.
Hipkins saYS on his official social media feed that he would need to isolate for up to five days -- less than two weeks before his country's general election.
The leader of the centre-left Labour Party said he started to experience cold symptoms on Saturday and had cancelled most of his weekend engagements. — AFP
The World Health Organization and US health authorities say Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown.
The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance "due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries", it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday.
So far, the variant has only been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States. — AFP
The World Health Organization says on Friday that the number of new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide rose by 80% in the last month, days after designating a new "variant of interest".
The WHO declared in May that Covid is no longer a global health emergency, but has warned that the virus will continue to circulate and mutate, causing occasional spikes in infections, hospitalisations and deaths.
In its weekly update, the UN agency said that nations reported nearly 1.5 million new cases from July 10 to August 6, an 80% increase compared to the previous 28 days. — AFP
The head of US intelligence says that there was no evidence that the COVID-19 virus was created in the Chinese government's Wuhan research lab.
In a declassified report, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says they had no information backing recent claims that three scientists at the lab were some of the very first infected with COVID-19 and may have created the virus themselves.
Drawing on intelligence collected by various member agencies of the US intelligence community (IC), the ODNI report says some scientists at the Wuhan lab had done genetic engineering of coronaviruses similar to COVID-19. — AFP
Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs over Covid lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street when he was prime minister, a UK parliament committee ruled on Thursday.
The cross-party Privileges Committee said Johnson, 58, would have been suspended as an MP for 90 days for "repeated contempts (of parliament) and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process".
But he avoided any formal sanction by his peers in the House of Commons by resigning as an MP last week.
In his resignation statement last Friday, Johnson pre-empted publication of the committee's conclusions, claiming a political stitch-up, even though the body has a majority from his own party.
He was unrepentant again on Thursday, accusing the committee of being "anti-democratic... to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination".
Calling it "beneath contempt", he said it was "for the people of this to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman", the veteran opposition Labour MP who chaired the seven-person committee. — AFP
- Latest
- Trending
