Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said Monday he would restore funding to the World Health Organization cut by President Donald Trump amid the coronavirus pandemic.
"Yes I will," Biden told CBS 4 in Miami. "But I'll also insist that we . . . do what we were doing before."
Biden said a pandemic office was set up in the Obama White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was "forward stationed in other countries" to anticipate a pandemic.
"So, I would get much more engaged in the world," Biden said. "We can't step back. If, in fact, for example, we solve the problem in the United States of America and you don't solve it in other parts of the world, do you know what's going to happen? You're going to have travel bans. You're going not going to be able to have economic intercourse around the world."
In 2005, President George W. Bush ordered stockpiles of personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators following the SARS scare, but the plan was never fully realized as other issues took precedence, and the Obama administration allowed the supply of N95 masks to expire without replacing them, ABC News reported.
Trump announced April 14 the United States would cut its contribution to the WHO over what he described as mismanagement over the coronavirus crisis during a review expected to last 60 to 90 days. The United States is the U.N. agency's largest contributor at $500 million a year.
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