President Trump attacked the World Health Organization (WHO) for not warning the world fast enough about the seriousness of the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak in China, and is contemplating freezing U.S. aid to the organization altogether.
"They called it wrong," he said during a press briefing on Tuesday night. "They could've called it months earlier, they should've known, and they probably did know."
The president said the U.S. is responsible for "the majority of money" the WHO receives but criticized the organization for being "very China-centric," pointing out that they took issue with the U.S. travel ban on travel from China in early February. In the earliest days of the COVID-19 outbreak, the WHO did indeed advise against any restrictions on travel or trade with China. Trump said he was called xenophobic and racist for the decision, but without his travel ban, the U.S. would've lost hundreds of thousands of lives.
"They always seem to err on the side of China, and we fund it so ... we're going to look at ending funding," he said.
On the COVID-19 home front, Trump also discussed data beginning to trickle out of certain areas of the country, showing the disproportionate impact the virus has had on the African-American community.
White House coronavirus task force member Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called this "an exacerbation of health disparities," explaining that comorbidities such as hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and asthma are "disproportionately prevalent" in minority populations and can "lead to a bad outcome."
This does not mean African Americans are more susceptible to contracting COVID-19, Fauci later clarified.
He compared how this health crisis has "shined a bright light" on the "weaknesses and foibles" of the health system for the African-American community, much like the HIV/AIDS crisis shined a similar light on the stigma facing the gay community.
"When [people] get infected with these underlying medical conditions, those are the things" they wind up in the ICU for, which leads to "a higher death rate," Fauci said.
He discussed gathering "enough data" in the next week or so to make a "meaningful statement" about the racial/ethnic breakdown of COVID-19 infections in the U.S., though he added, "the underlying reason why that's happening doesn't change from state to state."
Task force member Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, added it may be possible to use Medicare data to "look at related illnesses going forward" in varying populations, as Medicare now has a code for COVID-19, and they "will be doing that analysis."
But there is still no way to measure who has been infected, and task force member Ambassador-at-Large, Deborah Birx, MD, noted the U.S. is working with a series of companies that have made "rapid tests" for HIV, and are looking to "bring that quality of test to the American people for antibody tests."
Until then, Birx urged people if they saw an antibody test "on the Internet, do not buy them," as the test likely has low sensitivity and specificity.
Vice President Mike Pence then alluded to some potential CDC guidance that may be released about individuals who tested positive, but had no symptoms, and the conditions under which they could return to work, perhaps with wearing a "face covering" and "monitoring their temperature."
On the data front, Pence added that hospitalizations continue to decline in New York, the epicenter of the U.S. COVID-19 outbreak, and they "continue to see evidence of stabilization" of the outbreak there.
"I share these details in the hope that healthcare workers will be encouraged ... as you provide that extraordinary and courageous care," he said.