Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen apologized Sunday after he and his wife were caught by police breaking curfew rules at a restaurant.

The country has mandated that restaurants and bars shut down by 11 p.m. as a coronavirus prevention measure, but police told the Kronen Zeitung that the couple still had drinks at their table after midnight on Saturday night. The restaurant — which was officially shut down at the time, according to the newspaper — could face a fine of up to €30,000 for breaking the rules.

Van der Bellen said in a statement on Twitter that he had gone out to eat for the first time since lockdown began with his wife and two friends.

“We lost track of the time while chatting and unfortunately overlooked the hour,” he wrote. “I am sincerely sorry. It was a mistake. If the restaurant host suffers any damage from this, I will take responsibility for it.”

Municipal authorities must now decide whether the restaurant faces a penalty.

WASHINGTON — The World Health Organization and United States have been “connected since the very beginning” and its departure from the international body would be unimaginable, a WHO official said Sunday.

“The United States, since at least 1902, has been the leader in global public health and I cannot imagine an environment where the United States would not be in WHO and contributing to WHO as it does today,” Stewart Simonson, WHO’s assistant director-general of general management, said in an interview on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS.”

“WHO was founded by the United States and other member states,” Simonson added. “WHO has benefited from enormous generosity from the people of the United States and almost incalculable technical support.”

The official’s comments come nearly a week after U.S. President Donald Trump sent a letter to the WHO threatening to permanently halt funding and pull out of the international body if the agency “does not commit to major substantive improvements within the next 30 days.”

It is the latest escalation after Trump last month implemented a temporary freeze on WHO funding based on accusations that the agency mismanaged the onset of the pandemic and failed to hold China accountable on transparency.

“There is no conceivable reason WHO would sit on information. No interest of ours is served by doing so” — Stewart Simonson, WHO’s assistant director-general of general management

In response to charges that the WHO sat on information coming out of China about coronavirus and did not act quickly enough, Simonson said: “Both assertions are wrong on their face.”

“There is no conceivable reason WHO would sit on information. No interest of ours is served by doing so,” he said. “Our interest is in sounding the alarm when the evidence is indicating the alarm should be sounded and that is exactly what Dr. Tedros did.”

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said the agency is looking into the contents of Trump’s letter. Simonson acknowledged he wouldn’t yet make conclusions on China’s transparency until an independent review by the World Health Organization occurs.

Simonson, a former aide to Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson, served in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in different roles during the administration of President George W. Bush.

China has repeatedly bashed the U.S. allegations as a cover-up for Trump’s own mishandling of the outbreak in the United States.

Trump’s letter has received some partial nods of support, however. Germany’s Health Minister Jens Spahn urged the U.S. not to leave the organization, but acknowledged that Trump “does have a point — the WHO needs to reform its governance and accountability.”

The U.S. contributes roughly $400 million per year to the WHO, by far the biggest donor out of 194 member countries. The organization was founded in 1948 and has since played a leading role in public health crises, from smallpox to Ebola, which Simonson argued could not be done without support from its members, notably the U.S.

Trump has frequently resorted to ending or limiting U.S. involvement internationally under his “America First” approach. Earlier in his presidency, he withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement and the Iran nuclear agreement.

Besides the WHO, Trump also recently revealed plans to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty, which permits open surveillance over military activities, an agreement signed by more than 30 nations. The move has drawn backlash from Democrats as well as European countries.

WASHINGTON — China’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic is akin to the Soviet Union’s response to Chernobyl, U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security adviser Robert O’Brien said Sunday.

“The cover-up that they did of the virus is going to go down in history along with Chernobyl,” O’Brien told Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” referring to the 1986 nuclear disaster in Ukraine. “We’ll see an HBO special about 10 or 15 years from now.”

Asked about the implications of the pandemic for the newly-agreed-upon U.S.-China trade deal, O’Brien replied that “we’re in a very different world” than when negotiations first began.

“We want good relations with China and with the Chinese people, but unfortunately, we’re seeing just action after action by the Chinese Communist Party that makes it difficult,” O’Brien said. “With respect to the trade deal, we’ll see if they live up to it, but we’re dealing in a new world now with corona.”

“They unleashed a virus on the world that’s destroyed trillions of dollars in American economic wealth that we’re having to spend to keep our economy alive, to keep Americans afloat during this virus.”

Trump suggested earlier this month that he was considering abandoning the deal, signed earlier this year with great fanfare. His remarks came less than 12 hours after U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin spoke with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He — and released a joint statement saying they were optimistic China would keep up its end of the bargain.

The deal requires China to increase purchases of U.S. goods and services by $200 billion above 2017 levels over the next two years. That includes $76.7 billion more in U.S. exports this year and $123.3 billion more in 2021.

Doug Palmer contributed to this report.

Donald Trump “does have a point” about the need to change the World Health Organization, said German Health Minister Jens Spahn, but he urged the U.S. not to leave the body and to wait until after the coronavirus crisis to consider reforms.

Last week, the U.S. president threatened to end funding to the WHO and pull out of it altogether, unless it could demonstrate its independence from China.

Without mentioning China, Spahn told the Financial Times that the U.S. “does have a point — the WHO needs to reform its governance and accountability.”

“We need to figure out exactly where the money goes,” he added.

But Spahn said now was not the right time to undermine the global health body. “In the middle of a crisis, when you’re putting out fires, you can’t talk about reforming the fire brigade,” Spahn said. “First, we have to deal with the crisis, and only then talk about the WHO.”

U.S. contributions to the WHO are critical said Spahn, adding that he would be “very sorry” to see the country leave.

“Of course the U.S., Germany, Europe — we can do a lot on our own, but there are a lot of countries in the world that can’t,” the German politician said. “They need support and they should get it. If Ebola breaks out in another part of the world then we’ll no longer be able to control.”