Biden's US revives support for WHO

The United States will resume funding for the World Health Organisation and join its consortium aimed at sharing coronavirus vaccines fairly around the globe, President Joe Biden's top adviser on the pandemic says, renewing support for an agency that the Trump administration had pulled back from.

Dr Anthony Fauci's quick commitment to WHO - whose response to the pandemic has been criticised by many but perhaps most vociferously by the Trump administration - marks a dramatic and vocal shift toward a more co-operative approach to fighting the pandemic.

"I am honoured to announce that the United States will remain a member of the World Health Organisation," Fauci told a virtual WHO meeting on Thursday.

Just hours after Biden's inauguration on Wednesday, he wrote a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres saying the US had reversed the planned pullout from the WHO that was expected to take effect in July.

The withdrawal from the WHO was another instance of America's go-it-alone strategy under Trump but it also had practical ramifications. The agency's biggest donor stripped it of funding just as it was battling a health crisis that has killed more than two million people worldwide.

Fauci said the Biden administration would resume "regular engagement" with WHO and "fulfil its financial obligations to the organisation".

The WHO chief welcomed the US announcements.

"This is a good day for WHO and a good day for global health," director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. "The role of the United States, its role, global role is very, very crucial."

Fauci also said Biden would issue a directive on Thursday that showed the United States' intent to join the COVAX Facility, a project to deploy COVID-19 vaccines to people in need around the world - whether in rich or poor countries.

Under Trump, the US had been the highest-profile holdout from the COVAX Facility, which has struggled to meet its goals of distributing millions of vaccines because of financial and logistic difficulties.

Fauci also pointed to some key challenges facing WHO, saying the US was committed to "transparency, including those events surrounding the early days of the pandemic".