Staff across the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were ordered Monday to cut off all communications with the World Health Organization, multiple federal health officials confirmed to CBS News, to comply with President Trump’s executive order last week.
Beyond calling for the U.S. to begin the yearlong process to formally withdraw from funding the U.N. health agency, Mr. Trump’s executive order had also instructed federal agencies to “recall and reassign” any U.S. government personnel from working with the WHO.
The sweeping directive to implement the order was issued by the CDC’s Deputy Director for Global Health John Nkengasong in an email Monday, one official said, pending further guidance for when and how exceptions might be carved out.
CDC staff assigned to work for the WHO are also being told not to come into the office, the email said, pending further guidance from leadership.
Mr. Trump has long been critical of the WHO, blaming the organization for mishandling COVID-19 and saying it gets too much money from the U.S., which donates the most of any country.
At an event in Las Vegas on Jan. 25, he said the WHO had offered to cut the U.S. funding commitment down to around the amount given by China.
“Maybe we would consider doing it again. I don’t know. Maybe we would. They have to clean it up a little bit,” Mr. Trump said.
Former health officials tell CBS News they worry the U.S. withdrawal from the WHO could endanger efforts to respond to diseases, both undermining the U.N. agency and also making it harder for American officials to prepare.
The first way U.S. officials would sometimes hear about worrying outbreaks was through the WHO, especially in countries wary of working with American authorities. The WHO also relies on disease experts dispatched by the U.S. and other countries to fill its ranks.
“As has been repeated many times, infectious diseases know no boundaries and in today’s world of rapid travel, an outbreak anywhere is a threat everywhere,” said James LeDuc, an adjunct professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch.
Between working for the U.S. Army’s medical research and heading the Galveston National Laboratory, LeDuc worked for CDC as a WHO medical officer and later one of the agency’s top-ranking global health officials.
“The fact is that there is no alternative to WHO. WHO has the global mandate that allows health issues to be addressed on a global scale in a coordinated manner,” LeDuc said.
A World Health Organization spokesperson declined to comment on the move. The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Preparing for seasonal and pandemic influenza
The gag order comes ahead of a key committee meeting next month, where CDC officials were scheduled to help the WHO pick out strains for next winter’s influenza vaccine.
Influenza vaccine manufacturers and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration rely on the data and findings by that panel to decide on the shots used every fall around the Northern Hemisphere.
The CDC also plays a key role as a WHO “collaborating center” for flu, serving as one of the world’s one of the world’s top laboratories for testing and studying the virus.
Many countries send samples of worrying influenza cases to the CDC’s Atlanta laboratory for scrutiny of mutations that might pose a pandemic threat, like after deaths from bird flu or swine flu.
Responding to viruses like polio and Marburg
CDC staff assigned to work for the WHO often serve as liaisons with the agency’s disease experts, offering insights into worrying new germs the WHO is responding to around the world.
Others work with other countries to stomp out lingering diseases, like the Global Polio Eradication Initiative backed by both agencies.
The WHO also plays a key role in issuing licenses and coordinating trials that allow for the use of medicines to respond to diseases, especially for smaller countries facing outbreaks of new diseases.
Multiple former federal health officials said the WHO also played a key role in facilitating the response and rollout of a U.S. vaccine to respond to an outbreak of Marburg, an Ebola-like disease, in Rwanda last year.
Authorities are closely watching another outbreak of Marburg this year in Tanzania, which the WHO announced confirming last week.
Replacing U.S. expertise at the WHO
“The expertise provided by CDC and other U.S. government agencies is absolutely essential to the success of WHO activities and to the well-being of the United States,” said LeDuc.
LeDuc recalled that U.S. staff were once proud to don WHO uniforms, working steps away from scientists from former Cold War adversaries to stem emerging disease threats out of the international organization’s Geneva office.
“I don’t think we want, particularly as public health experts, to feel like they can only wave the U.S. flag in those positions. The reason why it worked is because we were able to be American and also to be global citizens,” said Loyce Pace, director of global affairs for HHS under the Biden administration.
Pace said there are hundreds of American health agency officials who work with the WHO. She said it is likely other countries will likely try to step to fill the void left by American public health officials.
Another former federal official said China has been seeking to fill more posts within the U.N. agency, worrying some U.S. officials about how they may seek to use their positions.
“My hope is that there’s a part of us that will continue to work to see that not as a weakness but as a strength, to distinguish us from other actors who don’t have that approach and, frankly, have not been as effective in building partnerships to protect the world,” said Pace.
