Gavi’s funding is axed as Trump shuts down research on covid and pandemic threats

US President Donald Trump’s administration has terminated a $2.6bn (£2bn; €2.4bn) grant to Gavi, the global vaccine alliance, while also ending research on vaccines and antiviral drugs that aim to treat and prevent future covid outbreaks and guard against a range of future viral pandemic threats.

The US government is also clawing back $11.4bn in pandemic response funds allocated to state and community health departments, non-governmental organisations, and international recipients, said the Department of Health and Human Services. As the toll of covid has diminished, much of this money has been diverted to other infectious disease efforts.

“The covid-19 pandemic is over,” said Andrew Nixon, the health department’s director of communications. “[The department] will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.”

Adriane Casalotti, chief of government and …