GOP House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy in a Sunday interview with Fox News characterized the World Health Organisation (WHO) as acting "like the Wuhan Health Organization" .
“You could bring oversight back to look at the WHO and this current administration, the WHO, is acting not like the World Health organization, but more like the Wuhan Health Organization”, McCarthy said.
The Republican representative made the comment while talking about a letter he sent to US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi last week regarding a plan to reopen Congress and return politicians to the legislative chambers.
McCarthy asserted to Fox host Maria Bartiromo that Pelosi “wanted to change 200 years of history.”
"What Nancy Pelosi wanted to do with Congress was to be able to hold 200 proxies, 200 different votes for members of Congress to make her more powerful", he said. “Fortunately, after my letter and our discussion with her, she has pulled back on that, but Congress is essential".
He said that lawmakers were “essential” workers who are needed to provide oversight during the coronavirus pandemic.
“I fully appreciate the unprecedented nature of this challenge before us. But now, more than ever, our constituents expect us to rise to the occasion and overcome these trying circumstances”, McCarthy wrote in his letter to Speaker Pelosi.
Activities in the House have been suspended as the US has enforced social-distancing measures to help slow the spread of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic.
The House on Thursday resumed session for the first time since March 27 to pass the $2 trillion CARES Act for small business, later signed into law by the president.
Despite confirming human to human transmission as early as 17 January, the Trump administration has suspended funding for WHO amid accusations that it aided in alleged information withholding in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic in Wuhan.
China and WHO have both rejected the accusations, with Chinese leadership accusing Trump of trying to shift the blame for his own administration's lackluster and misleading response to the crisis.
On 16 April, the Fox News broadcaster reported, citing informed sources, that the first carrier of COVID-19 had worked in the laboratory of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian, reacting to the unsubstantiated allegations, argued that the claims "have no scientific evidence".
