GENEVA — The United States says it wants the World Health Organization to start work “now” on a planned review of the WHO’s coordinated international response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

The U.N. health agency is facing a Trump administration threat to cut off funding.

Adm. Brett Giroir, an assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, sent a written letter to the U.N. health agency’s executive board meeting on Friday saying the United States believes the WHO can “immediately initiate organizational processes for the review,” such as by bringing together independent health experts and setting up guidelines for it.

Giroir is one of the board’s 34 international members but didn’t participate in person in the board’s first virtual meeting on Friday.

He alluded to a resolution passed Tuesday by the WHO’s assembly calling on its director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, to launch “comprehensive evaluation” of the WHO-coordinated international response to the outbreak to begin “at the earliest appropriate moment.”