29 March 2024

U.S. formally submits withdrawal from WHO

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The United States of America on Tuesday officially submitted its exit notification from the World Health Organization (WHO) to the United Nations secretary-general in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The United States will leave the WHO on July 6, 2021, and currently it owes the organization more than USD 200mn in assessed contributions, according to the WHO website, reports Xinhua.

U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration repeatedly threatened to cut ties with the organization. Trump also announced in mid-April that his administration would halt U.S. funding to the WHO.

Meanwhile, experts and Democrats criticized that the Trump administration was trying to shift the blame of its mishandling of COVID-19 response and would be counterproductive to addressing the public health crisis.

After the U.S. notification, Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, on Tuesday tweeted that "To call Trump's response to COVID chaotic & incoherent doesn't do it justice. This won't protect American lives or interests - it leaves Americans sick & America alone."

The country has reported more than 2.99 million COVID-19 cases with over 131,000 deaths, according to the latest Johns Hopkins University tally. Both figures are far higher than those in any other country or region.

After lockdown measures were eased in some states, the United States is struggling to respond to the devastation inflicted by COVID-19 even harder.

"We had been in a situation (where) we were averaging about 20,000 new cases a day," Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a livestream with Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health on Monday.

A series of circumstances associated with various states and cities trying to open up in a bid to get back to some form of normality, has led to a situation where the country now has "record-breaking cases," Fauci said.

California, Hawaii, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma and Texas on Tuesday shattered their previous daily record highs for new cases, according to the latest tally.


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