The U.S. Pulls $62 Million In Funding From The WHO

NBC News had more details:

The Trump administration is pulling U.S. officials from the headquarters of the World Health Organization, the multilateral agency leading the global fight against the cornavirus pandemic, even as cases in the United States climb above 6 million.

The U.S. officially announced its withdrawal from the WHO this summer, initiating a year-long process that will not go into effect until a year later on July 6, 2021. But the State Department announced Thursday that the U.S. is already beginning to scale down its engagement, including "recalling the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) detailees from WHO headquarters, regional offices, and country offices, and reassigning these experts."

"Today, the @realDonaldTrump Administration continues to move forward with the United States' withdrawal from the @WHO," Secretary Pompeotweeted on Thursday. "The WHO failed to adopt urgently needed reforms, starting with demonstrating its independence from the Chinese Communist Party."

U.S. participation in World Health Organization meetings will now be considered "on a case by case basis," Nerissa Cook, a deputy assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, told reporters Wednesday, "where we believe American interests need to be represented."

In addition, the U.S will now redirect remaining funds owed to the WHO — $62 million of the $120 million pledged for fiscal year 2020 — as well as the $18 million owed from fiscal year 2019, to the United Nations for "other assessments." Congress requires that the administration pay the remainder of U.S. assessed contributions to the WHO as part of the year long withdrawal process.

The administration will continue to make voluntary contributions to the WHO for specific programs, including $68 million for humanitarian health assistance in Libya and Syria as well as polio eradication in priority countries and $40 million for immunization and influenza programs, according to Dr. Alma Golden, assistant administrator for global health for the U.S. Agency for International Development. The U.S. has historically been the largest financial contributor to the World Health Organization, providing more than $400 million to the global agency in 2019.

The U.S. will also sit out the WHO-led plan to distribute a vaccine known as COVAX globally, joining China as one of the few countries to boycott the more than 170-country effort. COVAX, co-led by Gavi, the international organization that works to improve access to new and underused vaccines for children living in poor countries, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), and WHO, aims to "accelerate the development and manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines, and to guarantee fair and equitable access for every country in the world."

And from the Washington Examiner:

President Trump’s administration is reassigning the Department of Health and Human Services officials detailed to the World Health Organization and redirecting American funding to other organizations as he cuts ties with the global health agency.

Withdrawal from WHO "becomes effective on July 6, 2021, and since the president’s announcement, the U.S. government has been working to identify partners to assume the activities previously undertaken by WHO,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said Thursday. “U.S. participation in WHO technical meetings and events will be determined on a case-by-case basis.”

Trump’s withdrawal amounts to a $62 million loss for the WHO, which was slated to receive $120 million in the 2020 fiscal year from the United States. WHO officials collected just $58 million of that funding before the president froze the funding in response to the WHO leadership’s amplification of false information about China’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

“The WHO needs to reform, and that is starting with demonstrating its independence from the Chinese Communist Party,” the State Department’s Nerissa Cook, a senior official in the U.S. International Organization Affairs Bureau, told reporters Wednesday. “And it needs to make improvements in its ability to prepare for, to prevent, to detect, and to respond to outbreaks of dangerous pathogens.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has alleged that China managed to corrupt the senior leadership of the WHO, reportedly telling British lawmakers recently that “a deal was made” that prevented WHO from sounding the alarm at a time when China was censoring early warnings about the emerging virus. Preliminary investigations have also shown that the WHO applauded China’s transparency about the pandemic even while privately fretting that Beijing was not handing over necessary information.

Still, the mid-pandemic withdrawal has drawn sharp criticism from Western allies and public health analysts. But U.S. officials maintain that it will force reforms at the agency that will diminish the potential for malign political influence to undermine international responses to public health crises.

“The U.S. has traditionally been, I think since the very beginning, the largest donor to WHO,” the Department of Health and Human Services’ Garrett Grigsby said. “We actually do have quite a bit of leverage, and if they’re interested in seeing the United States stay, they will take that seriously and negotiate seriously.”

Pompeo and other American officials also have emphasized that the U.S. can provide American public health aid through entities that have not been suborned by China, and HHS officials plan to continue giving as much as $40 million to WHO programs.

“The WHO activities that HHS will support this year are one-time exceptions for funding, up to $40 million, in the program areas of immunization and influenza,” Grigsby said. “These contributions would be to ensure continuity of activities important to the health security of Americans for which there was not immediate alternative programmatic partners.”