If the Biden administration endorses any expansion of the World Health Organization’s power to declare public health emergencies or to require the United States to do anything, it will have a big obstacle to overcome: Senate Republicans. Every Republican senator, all 49 of them, wrote to President Joe Biden Wednesday to oppose any such language in pending revisions to the WHO’s international health regulations and a pandemic agreement diplomats are negotiating. The senators say the WHO failed in its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and needs reform, not more authority. The letter doesn’t list specific failures but indicates the GOP lawmakers think they were big. “The WHO’s failure during the COVID-19 pandemic was as total as it was predictable and did lasting harm to our country,” they wrote. What’s this about? The international health regulations govern how the WHO declares global health emergencies and the response from national governments, but they are unenforceable. WHO member countries have negotiated over changes for the past few years, trying to fine-tune the levels of alarm WHO can sound when a disease is spreading. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra called for the changes three years ago. The pandemic agreement, which is more controversial, is supposed to set national obligations for how governments should prevent, prepare for and respond to future pandemics. But disagreement between rich and poorer countries about how to ensure equity in a future outbreak, including on sharing intellectual property and pathogen information, have slowed progress. What’s next? Republican senators said changes to the international health regulations shouldn’t be considered at a WHO meeting this month, because it doesn’t give countries the four months required by the regulations to consider amendments. And they said they oppose the pandemic agreement because they fear it will focus “on mandated resource and technology transfers, shredding intellectual property rights, infringing free speech, and supercharging the WHO.” The WHO and member country negotiators have pushed back against assertions that the WHO would get more power from any agreement. But developing countries and health advocacy groups have warned that if nothing changes, the inequity in access to tests, treatments and vaccines that played out during Covid-19 for low- and middle-income countries will happen again whenever the next pandemic arrives.
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