New York Lawmakers Move to Keep State Tied to WHO Pandemic Networks Despite Federal Withdrawal

Two bills would create a permanent WHO-linked surveillance unit and a global health cooperation office inside New York’s Department of Health.

The New York State Assembly has introduced two separate bills that would embed World Health Organization–linked surveillance systems and international cooperation infrastructure directly into state law, even as the Trump administration has publicly withdrawn from the WHO at the federal level.

Both measures were introduced on February 12, 2026, and have been referred to the Assembly Committee on Health.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, New York moved rapidly to adopt stringent measures, aligning with the WHO’s controversial recommendations on distancing, closures, contact tracing, containment zones, testing, masking, and vaccination.

The legislation comes as NIH-funded scientists at Mount Sinai in New York have recently engineered synthetic chimeric bird flu viruses by combining avian, human, and lab strains, and separately constructed a lab-built H5N1-derived sequence shown to be 100% lethal in mammals.

The result is a system in which experimental pathogen work and expanded global outbreak governance are advancing side by side inside the same state.