The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a public health emergency in January, 2020 and declared it a pandemic in early March, 2020. The outbreak of COVID-19 has been instrumental in exposing how badly prepared countries are for a pandemic. Developed and developing countries alike have been struggling to deal with this pandemic of epic proportions.
Soon after the coronavirus being declared a pandemic, there began pandemic politics, with the United States and China at the centre of it; with a lot of criticism of WHO as being responsible for hiding facts and accusing China of being irresponsible with regards to the virus. At the forefront of this criticism was the US, which as a consequence also decided to cut funding to the WHO and quit from the organization. President Trump stated that the Chinese officials “ignored their reporting obligations” to the WHO about the virus which has killed hundreds of thousands of people globally. He also accused the agency of misinforming the world about the virus. It may be noted that the largest contributions to WHO come from the US and are estimated at around 450 million dollars a year.[1]
