The president asserted that the organization failed to reform at request, he decided to end the relationship with WHO. The funds would be redirected to other global public health needs.

A joint resolution of Congress on the membership of the United States of the agency said the country would reserve its right to withdraw from the WHO on a year's notice. As such, authorities are perplexed as to how or when Trump's decision will come into effect.

Cutting loose ends

Scholar Amesh Adalja at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security said that the removal of the United States' funding will likely not change the way WHO would operate. He said that morally or symbolically speaking, Trump's decision was the "wrong type of action" to take amid the pandemic. He added that it only deflected accountability for the failure of the United States to mitigate the coronavirus.

During a press briefing at the Rose Garden, the president said that authorities in the Chinese government disregarded their "reporting obligations" to the U.N. agency about the emergence of the coronavirus. Trump added that China might have pressured WHO to "mislead" the rest of the countries about the nature of the disease.

He was of the mind that China had full control of WHO, mentioning that the country paid only $40 million annually whereas the U.S. government was paying more than ten times the amount in comparison. Last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to give $2 billion to the WHO within the next two years to fight the coronavirus, which was the same amount for the annual program budget the year prior.

As of yet the United States' debt to the organization amounts to $200 million in terms of contributions. Washington also supports WHO financially through several hundred million dollars each year in funding programs against polio, HIV, hepatitis, and tuberculosis.

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WHO suspends trials of hydroxychloroquine

In other news, the WHO suspended all clinical trials of hydroxychloroquine after reports of safety concerns this week. The executive group ordered a "temporary pause" of the arm responsible for the drug's study in regards to the trials while data was being reviewed by the monitoring board.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the agency, said that a study published findings recently that proved patients being prescribed hydroxychloroquine were at higher risk of developing heart complications than those who were not. Other complications led to higher death rates among patients who participated in the trial being prescribed with the drug.

Meanwhile, Trump said he was "finished, just finished" taking hydroxychloroquine himself as a precaution after White House staff tested positive for coronavirus. In the earlier parts of the pandemic, he promoted the drug as a treatment for COVID-19. "I believe in it enough," he said, referring to how he started taking the program in the first place. He refused to give any comment on his decision to increase its production despite advice by the Food and Drug Administration for its use outside hospitals.

The controversial doctor who encouraged the use of hydroxychloroquine as treatment for COVID-19 insisted that it could allow patients to recover faster. He rejected the findings of the recently published study that led WHO to suspend trials of the drug despite over 96,000 records across different hospitals.