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Senior officials of the World Health Organization denied on Wednesday that the organization was "central China" and affirmed that the high point of a pandemic is not the time to reduce funding , after US President Donald Trump claimed that could suspend your country's contribution.

The United States is the largest donor to the WHO, an agency Trump said has issued bad advice during the new coronavirus outbreak . U.S. contributions in 2019 to the Geneva-based body exceeded $ 400 million, nearly double the second-largest contributor, according to figures from the U.S. State Department. China contributed $ 44 million

"We are still in the acute phase of a pandemic, so now is not the time to cut funding," said Dr. Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe, when asked about Trump's remarks.

The US president said at a press conference Tuesday that "he was going to stop the money spent at the WHO." However, he later seemed to backtrack, when in response to questions from journalists he said, "Let's go see it."

It is unclear how Trump could "block" WHO funding , since under US law it is Congress who decides how federal funds are spent, not the president.

Dr. Bruce Aylward, senior adviser to the WHO director-general, also defended the UN agency's relationship with China, stating that his work with the Beijing authorities was important in understanding the outbreak that started in Wuhan in December.

"It was absolutely critical in the first part of this outbreak to have full access to everything possible, to get to the field and to work with the Chinese to understand this," he told reporters. "This is what we did with specially affected countries like Spain and it had nothing to do with China specifically . "

Aylward, who led a WHO expert mission to China in February, defended WHO's recommendations to keep the borders open, claiming that China had worked "very hard" to identify and detect the first cases and their contacts and make sure they would not travel.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has praised China from the start of the outbreak , highlighting President Xi Jinping's "exceptional leadership".

David Heymann, a professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine who led the WHO response to the 2003 SARS outbreak, stressed that any cut in US funding would be a major blow.

"If WHO loses its funding, it can't continue to do its job. It already works on a tight budget," Heymann said in London. "Of course it would be disastrous for the WHO to lose funds."

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