US President Donald Trump boards the Marine One helicopter as he departs for the Camp David presidential retreat from the South Lawn of the White House, in Washington, the US, on May 15, 2020. (Photo by Reuters)

China says the United States is accusing the World Health Organization (WHO) of being biased toward China in an attempt to distract attention from his administration’s botched response to the coronavirus epidemic.

Trump on Monday sent a letter to the head of the UN agency, threatening to halt US funding permanently if the body failed to commit to unspecified improvements within a 30-day deadline, accusing the body of showing an alarming lack of independence from China.

Earlier on Monday, Trump had called the WHO a puppet of China.

WHO has formerly praised China’s response to its outbreak, which was the world’s first.

Addressing reporters on Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Washington was attempting to smear China and had miscalculated by trying to use China to shun its own responsibility.

Owing in large part to the Trump administration’s disregard of the virus’ real threat, the US jumped to the first rank among all world countries in terms of caseload and deaths in just a matter of weeks. The US has recorded 1,550,539 cases and a whopping 91,985 deaths as of Monday, according to worldometers.com.

Last month, Trump halted funding to the WHO, accusing the international body of mishandling the viral crisis.

The Trump administration has also been suggesting that the coronavirus was artificially synthesized at a lab in China and that Beijing failed to act promptly when its own outbreak began late last year.

The World Health Organization (WHO), senior US scientists, and even the US intelligence community have rejected both claims despite pressure from the White House.

China, too, has rejected the allegations.