Questions have been raised about the delay in cutting off US funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese laboratory suspected of being involved in a Covid lab leak cover-up. Former President Donald Trump claimed in April 2020 that he had evidence linking the pandemic to dangerous experiments at the WIV. Since then, various reports and leaks have supported the “lab leak theory,” leading the FBI and other government agencies to publicly endorse it. However, funding from US taxpayers continued to flow to the WIV until this week when the Biden Administration announced an indefinite suspension, citing the need to protect public interest. Critics argue that the White House hesitated to cut all funding due to the US government’s connections to the Chinese research institute, which has received millions in US funds over the years. There is also a belief that the Biden Administration was slow to accept the lab leak theory because of Trump’s early endorsement. Finally, on Monday, the Biden Administration suspended WIV’s access to government funding and proposed a longer-term ban after the lab failed to provide sufficient documentation of its biosafety protocols and security measures. Records show that US taxpayer dollars totaling at least $500,000 were sent to the WIV since 2014 for controversial research projects, some of which involved gain of function experiments. Gain of function experiments aim to understand and develop knowledge, drugs, and vaccines for future outbreaks but carry the risk of unintentionally creating a virus that could harm humans. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) began a relationship with the WIV in 2014, awarding a grant to EcoHealth Alliance, a New York nonprofit research group. The grant funded experiments involving the mixing of bat coronaviruses with other viruses, with $600,000 going directly to the WIV. The grant prohibited gain-of-function experiments and required researchers to inform the NIH and halt the research if potentially dangerous results were detected. However, EcoHealth Alliance subcontracted the grant to research facilities across Asia and Africa, including the WIV, which received at least $1.4 million. In 2018, facing a funding shortfall, EcoHealth submitted a research proposal to DARPA involving partnering with the WIV to engineer more deadly bat coronaviruses. The experiments described in public grant documents used viruses not closely related enough to Covid to cause the pandemic, but key records have not yet surfaced. Trump terminated US government funding to the WIV in April 2020 after it was revealed that the lab was receiving US funding. The WIV has not received any US taxpayer funding since September 2019. The Biden Administration’s decision to suspend funding was long-awaited but is only a ten-year ban rather than a permanent suspension. Dr. Fauci, who has close ties to EcoHealth Alliance’s president, Dr. Peter Daszak, has been criticized for downplaying lab leak theories. In August 2022, the NIH halted a sub-award to the WIV due to a lack of cooperation in providing records. The NIH later restarted the grant but excluded the controversial studies and imposed new accounting rules. The project no longer involves collecting new bat samples or working with the WIV.
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