Trump threatens to stop WHO funding as NY deaths pass 9/11 fatalities

In his regular press briefing on the coronavirus pandemic on Tuesday evening, U.S. President Donald Trump expressed displeasure with the World Health Organization saying it was too "China-centric".

Trump then threatened to withhold funding from the United States because they disagreed with him on his coronavirus travel ban.

But when pressed by reporters afterward, Trump then said, "I'm looking at it."

Meanwhile, New York City's coronavirus death toll surpassed the number of people killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11.

On that date in 2001, 2,977 people were killed when terrorists attacked the city.

According to counts released by the city, 3,202 people have died of COVID-19 as of Tuesday afternoon.

Johns Hopkins University, which has been tracking cases from multiple sources, later reported 4,009 deaths in New York City as of Tuesday evening -- 30% of all U.S. coronavirus deaths.

The total number of confirmed cases in the U.S. reached 386,817 with 12,285 deaths, while a total of 20,191 people have recovered, according to Johns Hopkins.

In other U.S. news, Acting U.S. Navy Secretary Thomas Modly resigned hours after he had publicly apologized for a profanity-laced upbraiding of the officer he removed as captain of the coronavirus-stricken USS Theodore Roosevelt.

Modly said Roosevelt's skipper had shown "extremely poor judgment" in widely distributed, by email, a letter calling for urgent help with the COVID-19 outbreak aboard his ship.

He then flew to the ship, at port in Guam, and delivered a speech to the crew Sunday in which he said Crozier was either "too naive or too stupid" to be in charge of an aircraft carrier.

COVID-19 around the world

The halting of global economies due to the coronavirus is having a huge impact on people in many developing countries that rely on remittances from relatives in the United States and elsewhere.

These monthly payments of $50, $100, or $200 are vital financial lifelines for people across Latin America, Africa and Asia.

The World Bank estimates a record $529 billion was transferred by people to developing countries through official channels in 2018, the latest year for which figures are available.

Many of those are sent home by people who work in service jobs or occupations, like day labor, that have no monthly paycheck and are worst affected by the global downtown.

Some also comes from illegal immigrants ineligible for part of the massive aid packages uncorked by advanced economies.

In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson remained in intensive care with the virus.

Japanese President Shinzo Abe declared a monthlong state of emergency for Tokyo and six other regions to keep the virus from ravaging the world's oldest population.

In encouraging news, the number of new cases in Italy a 24-hour period was 3,039 -- the lowest daily total since the outbreak first started there.

(Cover: Emergency medical technicians wheel a patient into Elmhurst Hospital Center's emergency room, Tuesday, April 7, 2020, in New York, during the current coronavirus outbreak. AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

(CGTN)