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President Trump’s announcement on Tuesday that the US will halt its funding to the World Health Organization while a review is conducted is a “big setback” for the international response to coronavirus, German Health Minister Jens Spahn said Thursday.

"The United States of America has been a longstanding partner and financial supporter of the World Health Organization … if they were to freeze their funding for the organization, that would be a big setback,” Spahn told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.

“Our position is that, in times like this, we need international cooperation, and the role of the WHO in this is crucial,” he added, asserting that the WHO has Germany’s “full” support.

On Tuesday, Trump told reporters that he would halt funding to the WHO while a review into the organization’s management of the coronavirus pandemic is conducted.

Spahn argued that any review of the organization ought to be carried out after the pandemic is overcome.

“Of course, we have to debate the lessons learned and we have to reflect on what went wrong and what can be done better, but that should be done after we overcome this,” Spahn said.