While vaccines are more abundant this year, many poorer countries have struggled to reinvigorate weapons, with hundreds of millions of donated vaccines either expired, returned or left idle. To address these logistical hurdles, U.S. aid has funded critical services in African countries, including safe delivery of vaccines, training of health workers and combating vaccine misinformation.

In November, for example, the U.S. embassy in the Cameroonian capital set up tents for mass vaccinations: in the first five days, more than 300,000 people were vaccinated. Without U.S. funding, these events would now be harder to hold.

Hall also noted that the consequences will extend well beyond COVID-19, saying that countries such as Congo and Mali, which are struggling with outbreaks of multiple diseases, will face tough choices.

“They’re going to have to choose between fighting Ebola, malaria, polio, Covid-19,” she said.

Jeff Zients, the outgoing head of the White House’s COVID-19 task force, lamented that the legislation did not include resources for an international pandemic, noting that it would also hurt efforts to track the virus’ genetic evolution.

“It’s really disappointing that there’s no global funding in this bill,” he said. “This virus knows no borders, and it’s in our national interest to vaccinate the world and prevent new variants that may emerge.”

Still, Zients announced that the U.S. would be the first to donate “tens of millions” of children’s vaccines to poorer countries, and said more than 20 countries have requested the vaccine.

J. Stephen Morrison, director of the Center for Global Health Policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, lamented that lawmakers were wrong to be optimistic about the outbreak when another wave could be on the horizon.

“We’ve made this mistake many times during this pandemic. We may make this mistake again,” he said.Cases of COVID-19, caused by the highly contagious omicron sub-variant BA.2, have surged in recent weeks Europewhile U.S. officials said they expected America soars soon.

Other experts worry that the U.S. suspension of global support for COVID-19 could prompt officials to abandon current vaccination goals. The World Health Organization has set a goal of vaccinating at least 70% of all countries by the middle of this year, but with nearly 50 countries vaccinating less than 20% of the population, it is highly unlikely that the target will be reached.

Instead, some groups, such as the Rockefeller Foundation and Duke University, have urged officials to “shift the vaccination goal from vaccinating 70 percent of all adults by summer to vaccinating 90 percent of the high-risk population in each country,” with some what critics say is true The world keeps failing Fairly share vaccines.

In Nigeria, which has so far received at least $143 million in COVID-19 aid from the U.S., authorities have dismissed suggestions that its coronavirus program will be affected by the loss of funds. The Nigerian presidency said U.S. help was mainly through capacity building, research support and “in-kind” donations of laboratory equipment and vaccines. “We believe this will not cause any disruption to our current plans,” it said.

Others, however, warned that the U.S. decision set an unfortunate precedent for global cooperation to end the pandemic at a time when new concerns such as the war in Ukraine drew more attention.

U.S. President Joe Biden had planned to hold a virtual summit in the first quarter of the year to keep international efforts on track, but no events were scheduled.

“Given the ongoing war in Ukraine, we have not yet set a final date for the summit, but we are working closely with countries and international partners to advance commitments,” a senior Biden administration official who was not authorized to comment publicly said.

As of this month, the WHO said it had received only $1.8 billion of the $16.8 billion needed to speed up access to coronavirus vaccines, drugs and diagnostics.

Dr. Krishna Udayakumar, director of Duke University’s Center for Global Health Innovation, said: “No one else is currently stepping up to fill this void, and the U.S. decision to suspend funding may lead other donor countries to take similar action.”

Keri Althoff, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, described the U.S. funding suspension as “devastating.”

“How could this be the issue we’re debating now?” she asked. “It is a moral obligation to the rest of the world to continue to contribute to the response to the global pandemic, not only to protect ourselves, but also to protect people around the world.”