NEW: Trump says that he will "put on hold" American funding to the World Health Organisation. He says they "missed the call" on #covid19.
If true, the news that Britain is now phoning the United States requesting help for new ventilators will be judged against the fact that we missed the deadline to participate in the EU ventilator purchase scheme, something that we were still entitled to do.
The UK govt could still take part in subsequent rounds of the EU ventilator scheme but has not confirmed that it will do so. This is what the govt said at the end of last month. 
That said, ventilators from either side from the Atlantic, are likely to take time, possibly long after the peak has passed. uk.reuters.com/article/us-hea…
The other UK/EU element of the last few weeks is the news from a fantastic @Reuters piece that “between Feb 13 and March 30 Britain missed a total of 8 conf calls/meetings about coronavirus between EU heads of state/health ministers- meetings Britain was still entitled to join.”
In some ways this isn’t surprising- towards the end Britain stopped attending EU ministerial meetings even when we were a member. But in the inevitable inquiry, suspect question will be put why all potential diplomatic opportunities weren’t utilised given scale of the crisis.
