President Donald Trump’s administration says the United States is rejecting changes agreed last year for the World Health Organisation on its pandemic response, claiming they violate the country’s sovereignty.

Trump, on returning to office on January 20, immediately began his nation’s withdrawal from the UN body, but the State Department
said the language from last year would still have been binding on the United States.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy jnr, who is a longtime critic of vaccines, said the changes “risk unwarranted interference with our national sovereign right to make health policy”.

“We will put Americans first in all our actions and we will not tolerate international policies that infringe on Americans’ speech, privacy or personal liberties,” they said in a joint statement on Saturday.

Rubio and Kennedy disassociated the United States from a series of amendments to the International Health Regulations, which provide a legal framework for combatting diseases, agreed last year at the World Health Assembly in Geneva.