A top medical journal that President Trump cited in his threat to pull funding to the World Health Organization permanently said the president is wrong about a claim he made concerning its reporting.
In a Monday letter addressed to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Trump threatened the permanent end of funding amid concerns that the organization failed to prepare the world for the coronavirus adequately, citing the Lancet, a leading British medical journal that has since said the president made a significant factual error in his correspondence.
Trump said in the letter that the United States would only maintain funding if the WHO agrees “to major substantive improvements within the next 30 days,” arguing that the 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.”
“This statement is factually incorrect,” the Lancet disputed in a Tuesday statement on social media, noting that it published “no report in December, 2019, referring to a virus or outbreak in Wuhan or anywhere else in China.”
Statement from The Lancet in response to President Donald Trump’s May 18 letter to Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization pic.twitter.com/JX8orfpMPB
— The Lancet (@TheLancet) May 19, 2020
The Lancet also explained that it first published reports about the coronavirus on Jan. 24, 2020. The medical journal published two pieces on that date, one of which focused on 41 COVID-19 patients in Wuhan. The second focused on the confirmation of person-to-person transmission of the virus.
“The allegations leveled against WHO in President Trump’s letter are serious and damaging to efforts to strengthen international cooperation to control this pandemic,” the statement concluded. “It is essential that any review of the global response is based on a factually accurate account of what took place in December and January.”
Trump announced his plan to suspend funding from the WHO on April 14, citing similar arguments that were addressed in his letter. The U.S. is the largest annual contributor to the WHO, accounting for about 15% of the organization’s budget — roughly $400 million.
