Now New York Governor Andrew Cuomo blasts WHO for not warning about coronavirus

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has joined Donald Trump in blasting the World Health Organization for being too slow to warn of the danger posed by coronavirus. Speaking at his daily press conference on Friday, Governor Cuomo said: ‘Where were the warning signs? Who should have blown the whistle?

‘The president has asked this question, and I think he’s right. The president’s answer is the World Health Organization should’ve been blowing the whistle…Where were the international experts saying, “Well if this is happening there, this is what we should expect to happen in the United States or prepare to happen in the United States’?”

‘Did we really need to be in this situation where the United States winds up having a higher number of cases than the places that came before?’ Cuomo, a Democrat who has previously criticized Trump, added that his work as a state governor meant that he was not as involved with foreign policy as the President.

But he insisted Trump was right to ask why the WHO, a branch of the United Nations, did not issue formal warnings to member states about the potential threat of coronavirus as soon as reports began to emerge from China in December. On Friday, President Trump himself teased an announcement about the USA’s $500million annual contribution to the WHO, but said he would announce his plans formally next week.

Earlier this week, the president criticized WHO bosses for being too ‘China-centric’ in their handling of the crisis. He said: ‘(The WHO) receives vast amounts of money from the US. We pay for the biggest portion of their money. They’ve been wrong about a lot of things. They had a lot of information early and they didn’t want to, they seem to be very China-centric…that’s a nice way of saying it.

‘They seem to err on the side of China. ‘We’re going to look into that…they called it wrong. They missed the call. They could have called it months earlier. They could have known…they probably did know. We’re going to put a very powerful hold on money spent with the WHO. ‘When they call every shot wrong that’s no good…They didn’t see what was going on, they didn’t report it.’

In January, WHO executive director Dr Michael Ryan said that China was ‘doing the right things’ about coronavirus, and added: ‘We’ve seen now obvious lack of transparency.’ US intelligence officials have subsequently claimed that China vastly underreported the number of people killed by Covid-19, and think the true death toll is over 40,000, rather than the 3,300 officially reported.

Trump’s comments have also seen him accused of trying to deflect criticism from his initial reluctance to tackle the threat posed by the virus, with critics claiming he could have acted to protect the US 70 days earlier than he did.

WHO director Dr Tedros Adhanom hit out at Trump for ‘politicizing’ the crisis.