“Now, the US and China should come together and fight this dangerous enemy,” Tedros said. “[There is] no need to use Covid to score political points.”

“We don’t do politics at WHO,” he said. “We care for the poor. We care for those who are vulnerable.”

On Tuesday, Trump threatened to withhold US funding from the World Health Organisation. He had castigated the WHO on Twitter earlier that day and issued a veiled threat against the agency.

“The W.H.O. really blew it. For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China-centric. We will be giving that a good look,” he said.

“Fortunately, I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?”

Responding to a question about Trump’s criticism, Tedros said: “Please don’t politicise this virus. It exploits the differences you have at the national level. If you want to be exploited and if you want to have more body bags, then you do it.”

Tedros also turned to what he said were personal racist comments that started in Taiwan.

“I can tell you personally attacks which have been going on for more than two, three months: abuses, or racist comments, giving me names, black or negro,” he said. “Maybe for the first time I will make this public: even death threats. I don’t give a damn.

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“Three months ago, this attack came from Taiwan … And Taiwan, the foreign ministry, they also know the complaint. They didn’t dissociate themselves. They even started criticising me in the middle of all that insult and slur. But I didn’t care – three months.

“Since I don’t have any inferiority complex when I’m personally affected or attacked by racial slurs, I don’t care, because I am a very proud black person or negro. I don’t care being called even negro – I am.”

Taiwan has criticised the WHO for not working with the self-ruled island, which Beijing insists should not be individually represented on the international level.

Two weeks before the WHO said in a tweet on January 14 that the new coronavirus did not appear to spread via human-to-human transmission, citing Chinese government information, Taiwanese health authorities had reached the opposite conclusion.

But Taiwanese foreign minister Joseph Wu said they never heard back from the WHO even though Taiwan tried to reach out to the United Nations about its finding.

On Thursday, Taiwan demanded an apology from the WHO chief over his accusations that the island’s government led personal attacks against him and his agency’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

“Our country has never encouraged the public to launch personal attacks against him or made any racially discriminatory comments,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou said.

In a Facebook post, President Tsai Ing-wen invited Tedros to visit Taiwan and learn from its handling of the epidemic, challenging him to “resist pressure from China”.

“We have been blocked from international organisations for many long years and we know what it feels like to be discriminated against and isolated more than anyone else,” she said.

Taiwan is seen as one of the few places in the world which has successfully stemmed the spread of Covid-19 without resorting to draconian measures.

Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse