NEW YORK (TNND) — The United States officially withdrew from the World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday, blaming the agency's mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic and its "ongoing lack of reform, accountability, & transparency."

President Donald Trump announced right after taking office last year that America would end its 78-year-old commitment.

"The WHO delayed declaring a global public health emergency and a pandemic during the early stages of COVID-19, costing the world critical weeks as the virus spread," federal officials said in a release.

"During that period, WHO leadership echoed and praised China's response despite evidence of early underreporting, suppression of information and delays in confirming human-to-human transmission," the release read. "The organization also downplayed asymptomatic transmission risks and failed to promptly acknowledge airborne spread."

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Secretary of State Marco Rubio criticized WHO in a joint statement, saying the organization "pursued a politicized, bureaucratic agenda driven by nations hostile to American interests."

"In doing so, the WHO obstructed the timely and accurate sharing of critical information that could have saved American lives and then concealed those failures under the pretext of acting 'in the interest of public health,'" Kennedy and Rubio added.

Moving forward, officials said the U.S. will only engage with the WHO "to effectuate our withdrawal and to safeguard the health and safety of the American people."

The U.S. owes more than $130 million to the global health agency, according to WHO. And Trump administration officials acknowledge that they haven't finished working out some issues, such as lost access to data from other countries that could give America an early warning of a new pandemic.

U.S. officials helped lead the WHO's creation, and America has long been among the organization's biggest donors, providing hundreds of millions of dollars and hundreds of staffers with specialized public health expertise.

On average, the U.S. pays $111 million a year in member dues to the WHO and roughly $570 million more in annual voluntary contributions, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

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Editor's note: The Associated Press contributed to this article.