World Health Organisation officials have denied that the body is “China-centric” and said that the acute phase of a pandemic is not the time to cut funding, after US President Donald Trump said he would put contributions on hold.

Dr Bruce Aylward, senior advisor to the WHO Director-General, also defended the UN agency’s relationship with China, saying its work with Beijing authorities was important to understand the outbreak which began in Wuhan.

“It was absolutely critical in the early part of this outbreak to have full access to everything possible, to get on the ground and work with the Chinese to understand this,” he told reporters.

“This is what we did with every other hard hit country like Spain and had nothing to do with China specifically.”

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