World Health Organization (WHO) Assistant Director-General Bruce Aylward avoided answering questions about Taiwan Saturday by pretending not to catch the question a Hong Kong reporter asked repeatedly.

“Will the WHO reconsider Taiwan’s membership?” asked Yvonne Tong.

Her question was met with an awkward silence prompting a “hello?” from the interviewer.

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear your question, Yvonne,” said Aylward.

“Let me repeat the question,” Yvonne said back.

“No, that’s okay. Let’s move on to another one then,” said Aylward.

When Yvonne refused, Aylward ended the interview and logged off. After reconnecting, Yvonne asked about Taiwan again, and Aylward declined to discuss the topic.

“We’ve already talked about China, and you know, when you look across all the different areas of China, they’ve actually all done quite a good job, so with that, I’d like to thank you very much for inviting us to participate and good luck as you go forward with the battle in Hong Kong.”

‼️WOW‼️ Bruce Aylward/@WHO did an interview with HK's @rthk_news & when asked about #Taiwan he pretended not to hear the question. The journalist asks again & he hangs up! She calls back & he said "Well, we've already talked about China." ENJOY+SHARE THE MADNESS! #CoronaVirus pic.twitter.com/jgpHRVHjNX — Hong Kong World City☔️🖐🏻👆🏻 (@HKWORLDCITY) March 28, 2020

While China has been reporting a sharp decline in the number of new Wuhan virus cases, the Chinese data is almost certainly inaccurate given the East Asian nation’s early decisions to suppress whistleblowers at the onset of the outbreak and to turn a blind eye to the virus’ threat.