{"id":425456,"date":"2026-01-23T18:08:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T18:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/425456\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T18:08:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T18:08:08","slug":"us-officially-exits-who-over-covid-19-response-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/425456\/","title":{"rendered":"US officially exits WHO over COVID-19 response failure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NEW YORK (TNND)  \u2014 The United States officially withdrew from the World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday, blaming the agency&#8217;s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic and its &#8220;ongoing lack of reform, accountability, &amp; transparency.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>President Donald Trump announced right after taking office last year that America would <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/presidential-actions\/2025\/01\/withdrawing-the-united-states-from-the-worldhealth-organization\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">end its 78-year-old commitment. <\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The WHO delayed declaring a global public health emergency and a pandemic during the early stages of COVID-19, costing the world critical weeks as the virus spread,&#8221; federal officials said in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hhs.gov\/press-room\/united-states-completes-who-withdrawal.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">release<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;During that period, WHO leadership echoed and praised China&#8217;s response despite evidence of early underreporting, suppression of information and delays in confirming human-to-human transmission,&#8221; the release read. &#8220;The organization also downplayed asymptomatic transmission risks and failed to promptly acknowledge airborne spread.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Secretary of State Marco Rubio criticized WHO in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hhs.gov\/press-room\/joint-statement-by-secretary-of-state-rubio-and-secretary-of-health-and-human-services-kennedy-on-the-termination-of-us-membership-in-the-world-health-organization-who.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">joint statement<\/a>, saying the organization &#8220;pursued a politicized, bureaucratic agenda driven by nations hostile to American interests.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In doing so, the WHO obstructed the timely and accurate sharing of critical information that could have saved American lives and then concealed those failures under the pretext of acting &#8216;in the interest of public health,'&#8221; Kennedy and Rubio added. <\/p>\n<p>Moving forward, officials said the U.S. will only engage with the WHO &#8220;to effectuate our withdrawal and to safeguard the health and safety of the American people.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. owes more than $130 million to the global health agency, according to WHO. And Trump administration officials acknowledge that they haven&#8217;t finished working out some issues, such as lost access to data from other countries that could give America an early warning of a new pandemic. <\/p>\n<p>U.S. officials helped lead the WHO&#8217;s creation, and America has long been among the organization&#8217;s biggest donors, providing hundreds of millions of dollars and hundreds of staffers with specialized public health expertise.<\/p>\n<p>On average, the U.S. pays $111 million a year in member dues to the WHO and roughly $570 million more in annual voluntary contributions, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. <\/p>\n<p>_____<\/p>\n<p>Editor&#8217;s note: The Associated Press contributed to this article. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (TNND) \u2014 The United States officially withdrew from the World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday, blaming&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-425456","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}