Trump announced the halt in U.S. funding for WHO on Tuesday. He accused WHO, as a the world’s health agency, of misleading the world about the COVID-19 outbreak in China and blaming it for the resulting high death tolls around globe.

Germany slammed Trump’s WHO decision as “blaming others” for the coronavirus. According to CBS, “Blaming others won’t help. The virus knows no borders,” wrote Heiko Maas (Germany’s Foreign Minister) on Twitter.

Bill Gates, billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder called this, “as dangerous as it sounds.”

Later, Gates retweeted WHO’s “work is slowing the spread of COVID-19, and if that work is stopped no other organization can replace them. The world needs @WHO now more than ever.”

Trump announced Wednesday, that the U.S. will cut WHO funding.

The US is the biggest contributor to the WHO, making payments of $400 million in 2019. It is 15% of its budget.

Some do agree with Trump’s point of view, as WHO’s hesitation in calling the Novel Coronavirus outbreak a pandemic for an extended period of time had potentially misled those in other parts of the world about the seriousness of the Novel Coronavirus, with Europe and the US seeing some of the heaviest effects.

However, COVID-19 vaccine is still in development, and some also worry about the effect of halting the funding on WHO could have on vaccine development.

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