September 2, 2020: The United States announced yesterday that it will not join the international effort in finding and distributing the COVID-19 vaccine as the group is associated with the World Health Organization (WHO). The latest decision from the Trump administration is leading towards the concern of pandemic over politics.

Covax is co-lead by the WHO, which aims to purchase a 2billion vaccine from multiple vaccine providers and distribute is worldwide by the end of 2021. WHO recently addressed the plan of Covax will be working with the vaccine manufacturers to give worldwide access to vaccines. There are multiple vaccines under human trials, and upon getting approval on the vaccine, the Covax movement will address and include all the 173 countries to have access to the vaccine.

Monday, the European Commission has announced to contribute 400 million euros to the initiative, and the WHO also confirmed Germany, supporting the movement. “The United States will continue to engage our international partners to ensure we defeat this virus, but we will not be constrained by multilateral organizations influenced by the corrupt World Health Organization and China,” said Judd Deere, a spokesman for the White House.

According to the Washington Post, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar had “interest in exploring some type of role in Covax… but there was resistance in some corners of the government and a belief that the U.S. has enough coronavirus vaccine candidates in advanced clinical trials that it can go it alone.”

The World Health Organization has warned against “vaccine nationalism,” with WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stating, “for the world to recover faster, it has to recover together because it’s a globalized world: the economies are intertwined.”

Trump reversed his statement in April blasting at the WHO and pointing out they are China-centric. He also stated WHO has frozen the US funding because of the same reason. “When the U.S. says it is not going to participate in any sort of multilateral effort to secure vaccines, it’s a real blow,” said Suerie Moon, co-director of the Global Health Center at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. “The behavior of countries when it comes to vaccines in this pandemic will have political repercussions beyond public health.”