Covid-19 roundup: Trump is crit­i­cized for cut­ting off WHO fund­ing; J&J sets up TV show to chron­i­cle vac­cine de­vel­op­ment

In yet an­oth­er chaot­ic press con­fer­ence on Tues­day, Pres­i­dent Trump ac­cused the WHO of “se­vere­ly mis­man­ag­ing and cov­er­ing up” the out­break, say­ing that “so much death has been caused by their mis­takes.” Ac­cord­ing­ly, he vowed that the Unit­ed States would cease fund­ing the UN agency un­til it had re­viewed the or­ga­ni­za­tion’s ac­tions.

The US con­tributes to about 15% of the WHO’s an­nu­al bud­get, which is more than $400 mil­lion, mak­ing it the agency’s biggest donor. The de­ci­sion to halt fund­ing by Trump, who has him­self been chas­tised for a slow, im­po­tent re­sponse to the cri­sis in the Unit­ed States, trig­gered a firestorm of crit­i­cism from a range of quar­ters.

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