麻豆传媒

WASHINGTON -- President Trump on Friday made good on previous threats to leave the World Health Organization, ramping up his criticisms of China as well.

At an afternoon press conference, Trump said China's "cover-up" of the "Wuhan virus" enabled the disease to spread, costing the U.S. more than 100,000 lives and over a million lives globally.

"Chinese officials ignored their reporting obligations to the World Health Organization, and pressured the World Health Organization to mislead the world when the virus was first discovered by Chinese authorities. Countless lives have been taken and profound economic hardship has been inflected all around the globe," Trump declared. "China has total control over the World Health Organization despite only paying $40 million per year compared to what the United States has been paying, which is approximately $450 million a year."

Trump said that the WHO also recommended against a ban on travel with China, "but I did it anyway and was proven to be 100% correct."

The president said his administration had requested the WHO take several specific steps, "but they have refused to act," he said.

"Because they have failed to make the requested and greatly needed reforms, we will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization and redirecting those funds to other worldwide and deserving urgent global public health needs." He did not indicate where or how those funds, appropriated by Congress, would be spent.

The president went on to stress the need for transparency from China.

"Why is it that China shut off infected people from Wuhan to all other parts of China ... but they allowed them to freely travel throughout the world including Europe and the United States?... We must have answers not only for us but for the rest of the world."

In addition to commenting on the withdrawal from the WHO, the president also underscored his concerns about "protecting America's scientific and technological advances."

"For years the government of China has conducted illicit espionage to steal our industrial secrets, of which there are many."

Trump promised to issue "a proclamation to better secure our nation's vital university research and to suspend the entry of certain foreign nationals from China who we have identified as potential security risks."

The president departed without taking questions from reporters in attendance.

Medical groups react

Patrice Harris, MD, president of the American Medical Association, called the president's actions "senseless" arguing that the U.S. needs all of its global partners to help in vaccine development and to defeat the virus.

"In the grip of a global pandemic that has already killed more than 100,000 Americans, severing ties with the World Health Organization (WHO) serves no logical purpose and makes finding a way out of this public health crisis dramatically more challenging. This senseless action will have significant, harmful repercussions now and far beyond this perilous moment, particularly as the WHO is leading worldwide vaccine development and drug trials to combat the pandemic," Harris .

"COVID-19 affects us all and does not respect borders; defeating it requires the entire world working together. In the strongest terms possible, the American Medical Association urges the President to reverse course and not abandon our country's leadership position in the global fight against COVID-19."

The Infectious Diseases Society of America also objected to the president's action.

"As infectious diseases physicians on the front line of combating the current global crisis we stand strongly against President Trump's decision to leave the World Health Organization," said Thomas File Jr., MD, the group's president, . "This pandemic has demonstrated that neither national boundaries nor political positions can protect us from the spread of an infectious disease. We will not succeed against this pandemic, or any future outbreak, unless we stand together, share information, and coordinate actions."

The American Academy of Pediatrics was similarly disappointed.

"The Trump Administration's decision to withdraw from the WHO carries grave risks for the world's children during an unprecedented global health crisis. The decision to withdraw risks causing a surge in polio cases and an increase in deaths of children from malaria, and it will further delay life-saving vaccination campaigns," Mark Del Monte, JD, CEO and Executive Vice President of the AAP send in a .

The group urged the administration to "reconsider its position and continue to work with the WHO to combat COVID-19 and promote the health of children globally."

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, broke with the president in voicing concern over leaving the WHO.

"I disagree with the president's decision," he . Certainly there needs to be a good, hard look at mistakes the World Health Organization might have made in connection with coronavirus, but the time to do that is after the crisis has been dealt with, not in the middle of it."

Alexander said leaving the WHO would diminish our ability to conduct clinical trials aimed at developing vaccines and "make it harder to work with other countries to stop viruses before they get to the United States."

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