WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump spread a number of false and misleading claims about the World Health Organization in announcing his decision to cut U.S. ties with the agency over the coronavirus epidemic.
Trump last week said he would halt funding and a decades-long U.S. relationship with WHO, accusing it of being controlled by China and misleading the world about the virus. He cited his May 18 letter to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that laid out allegations and demanded changes.
An AP Fact Check found numerous inaccuracies in that letter.
Trump accused WHO of ignoring scientific reports in December of the virus spreading in China that did not exist and assailed the group for criticism of a U.S. travel ban on China that it never lodged. He also overstated the level of knowledge about human transmission of the virus at the time.
Trump's escalating actions, which have drawn heated responses from China, come as his administration faces criticism for his own botched response to the outbreak, including testing delays. The death toll for Americans has surpassed 100,000, the most in the world.
Here is a look at some of his claims and reality.
Withdrawal from WHO
TRUMP: "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." — remarks Friday
THE FACTS: It's unclear whether the president can unilaterally withdraw the U.S. from WHO without approval from Congress.
Lawrence Gostin, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, said in tweets Friday that Trump's move is "unlawful" because ending funding requires Congress, which has authorized the money. He called it "dangerous" because "we're in the middle of a pandemic."
"Trump has no power to do it," Gostin wrote.
Congressional Democrats said in April, when Trump first proposed withholding money from WHO, that it would be illegal without approval from Congress and that they would challenge it. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday called the move "an act of extraordinary senselessness."
The United States helped found WHO in 1948. It provides the group about $450 million a year, according to Trump.
Covid-19 response
TRUMP: "The World Health Organization consistently ignored credible reports of the virus spreading in Wuhan in early December 2019 or even earlier, including reports from the Lancet medical journal. The World Health Organization failed to independently investigate credible reports that conflicted directly with the Chinese government's official accounts, even those that came from sources within Wuhan itself." — May 18 letter
THE FACTS: No such study existed in December, according to the Lancet, a leading medical journal.
The Lancet said the first papers it published on the coronavirus came from Chinese and Hong Kong researchers on Jan. 24. There was no report in December "referring to a virus or outbreak in Wuhan or anywhere else in China," the journal said.
The outbreak was detected by Wuhan doctors in late December. Gao Fu, the head of China's Centers for Disease Control, found out about it on Dec. 30, 2019, after notices issued by Wuhan health officials leaked online.
WHO was alerted to a "cluster of atypical pneumonia" via media reports and its own surveillance system on Dec. 31, and it requested information from China on Jan. 1.
"In the first weeks of January WHO was very, very clear; we alerted the world on January 5th," Michael Ryan, executive director of WHO's Health Emergencies Program, told reporters on April 15. "Systems around the world, including in the U.S., began to activate their emergency management systems on January 6th."
Retrospective studies, published in the Lancet and elsewhere, have shown that the first known patients fell ill with the virus at the beginning of December or even earlier, but those cases were not detected until much later. Health experts say it is extremely difficult to detect a new pathogen, especially during the winter flu season, and that Chinese doctors identified the new coronavirus quickly by global standards. There is no evidence that top Chinese officials or WHO were aware of the virus before Dec. 30.