WHO Announces ‘Pandemic Agreement’ Years After COVID-19

The Trump administration ordered a U.S. withdrawal from WHO as well as the pandemic treaty negotiations earlier this year.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus holds a press conference at the World Health Organization's headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, on Dec. 14, 2022. Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on April 15 that its member states reached a “pandemic agreement,” five years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, to prepare for future ones.

“After more than three years of intensive negotiations, WHO member states took a major step forward in efforts to make the world safer from pandemics,” the United Nations-backed health body said in a statement.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, hailed the decision, saying it would make the world “safer” and demonstrate “that multilateralism is alive and well, and that in our divided world, nations can still work together to find common ground.”

The draft treaty notably includes a provision to guarantee that countries that share critical virus samples receive any resulting tests, medicines, and vaccines, with the WHO keeping 20 percent of such products to ensure that poorer countries get supplies.

Negotiations on this provision are expected to continue after the treaty is likely accepted by member countries in May.

Countries are already legally bound by the International Health Regulations to do things such as quickly report dangerous new outbreaks. But those have been flouted repeatedly, including by some African countries during Ebola and other outbreaks, as well as by the Chinese communist regime in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2019 and early 2020.

Anne-Claire Amprou, a co-chair of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body, which was established in 2021 by WHO’s member states, said that the agreement will be a “major step forward in protecting populations, the response will be faster, more effective and more equitable” and will bolster “equity and international security.”

Under the proposal, countries will have their own “sovereignty” to deal with public health issues within their borders.

“Nothing in the draft agreement shall be interpreted as providing WHO any authority to direct, order, alter or prescribe national laws or policies, or mandate States to take specific actions, such as ban or accept travelers, impose vaccination mandates or therapeutic or diagnostic measures or implement lockdowns,” WHO said in its statement.

U.S. negotiators left the discussions after President Donald Trump began a year-long process of removing the United States from the U.N. agency when he took office in January.

Trump  issued an executive order to leave, citing WHO’s “mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises,” as well as an inability to adopt reforms and what he called China’s “inappropriate political influence.”

In his order, Trump also directed Secretary of State Marco Rubio to “cease negotiations on the WHO Pandemic Agreement and the amendments to the International Health Regulations, and actions taken to effectuate such agreement and amendments will have no binding force on the United States.”

Federal health officials are also barred from partaking in talks with WHO.

During COVID-19, U.S.-based research and development produced several widely used vaccines.

Weeks after Trump’s announcement, Argentine President Javier Milei said his country has left WHO and described it as a “harmful organization” that was the “executing arm of what was the largest social-control experiment in history,” referring to COVID-19 measures.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.