Republicans Press WHO About Its 'Failed And Delayed' Response To Coronavirus

In the face of overwhelming evidence that the Trump administration has failed to heed warnings and bungled its response to the growing coronavirus pandemic, some Republicans in the Senate are on the trail of the real culprit in this catastrophe: the World Health Organization.

In a letter to the United Nations agency in charge of public health on Tuesday, a group of GOP senators demanded information about what they called the WHO’s “failed and delayed” response to the outbreak, accusing the agency of “helping Communist China cover up” the true extent of the coronavirus, which originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.

“American taxpayers deserve answers about how their taxpayer dollars are spent, and whether Congress should continue to spend millions of dollars every year to fund the WHO,” read the letter, which was signed by Republican Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rick Scott of Florida, Todd Young of Indiana, Kevin Cramer of North Daktoa, Joni Ernst of Iowa, and Martha McSally of Arizona.

The document requested information and documents from the WHO about its communications with Chinese officials and data on the salaries of its top officials. Republicans have also called on the WHO director-general to appear before Congress at a future hearing on the agency’s response to the coronavirus.

China has been accused of understating its epidemic by censoring and vastly undercounting its official death toll. The nation’s public figures even alarmed the CIA, which warned the White House about understated infection numbers from China in early February. Beijing claims that only a little over 3,000 people in China have been killed by COVID-19, far fewer than in other countries.

Republicans say the WHO is to blame because it bowed to China’s influence and failed to alert the world about the true threat of the virus.

“It looks like the World Health Organization was parroting their propaganda,” McSally said in a Fox News interview earlier this month. “One thing is for sure, we would be in a better place as a country, clear-eyed, realistic, to attack this virus and kill this virus and minimize the economic impact, if China, communist China, and the World Health Organization wasn’t so reckless.”

WHO’s actions aside, the allegations miss another key part of the story: the U.S. government’s own bungled response to the crisis. President Donald Trump, in particular, downplayed the virus for weeks by comparing it to the common flu even after it had begun to spread in the U.S. Moreover, Trump repeatedly praised Chinese President Xi Jinping by saying he had handled the epidemic “really well” and was doing “a very good job with a very, very tough situation.”

The Trump administration, meanwhile, has failed to make COVID-19 tests readily available to every American who needs one and has struggled to provide enough key supplies like protective gear and ventilators to health care professionals.

The outbreak has claimed the lives of at least 25,000 people in the U.S, officially the most of any country.

“It’s widely ironic that the president and his allies are now criticizing the WHO for being soft on China when in fact it was the president who was being the chief apologist for China during the early stages of this crisis,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said during a press call on Tuesday.