The Biden administration's Department of Health and Human Services announced on Wednesday that it has officially banned the Wuhan Institute of Virology from receiving US funding for a decade, based on mounting evidence that it was ground zero for the Covid-19 pandemic.
On Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra sent a letter to WIV Director Genera, Dr. Yanyi Wang, to inform her that the lab - which Dr. Anthony Fauci offshored risky gain-of-function research to, would no longer be funded by US grants until July 16, 2033, the NY Post reports.
The letter notes that attempts had been made to contact the lab via fax, email and mail about HHS’s decision to suspend funding in July, but no WIV officials had contested the designation or even responded to the agency.
In that earlier missive, the NIH said it found the Wuhan Institute of Virology had “conducted an experiment yielding a level of viral activity which was greater than permitted under the terms of the grant,” which was for the study of bat coronaviruses.
Other requests for the Chinese research institution’s lab findings had also been ignored after NIH made requests for them on Nov. 5, 2021, and Jan. 6, 2022. -NY Post
"WIV has not acknowledged the violations, has not cooperated with the Government to address the violations, has not accepted responsibility for the violations, and, therefore, presumably has taken no action to eliminate the risk to the Government in conducting business transactions with WIV presently or into the future," the letter reads.
On Wednesday, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus released a redacted copy of the letter, calling it an "obvious step in the right direction."
"This is especially timely as mounting evidence and intelligence continue to suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic originated from a laboratory failure in Wuhan," said Wenstrup, a Republican from Ohio. "Rewarding the likely source of a global pandemic with American resources will only lead to more future health risks."
"Further, the Select Subcommittee recently revealed that prominent public health authorities — including Dr. Anthony Fauci — knew about the risky laboratory conditions in Wuhan prior to the spread of COVID-19 worldwide," he added.
"Covering up for the failures of a Chinese lab, hiding critical evidence from the American people, and facilitating the public promotion of a false, alternative narrative is extremely concerning and deserves thorough investigation."
Recall that Fauci - who offshored banned gain-of-function research to make bat coronaviruses more transmissible to humans - was accused by Congressional investigators of having 'prompted' the fabrication of a paper by a cadre of scientists aimed at disproving the Covid-19 lab-leak theory.
As the Post further notes, US taxpayers paid more than $2.1 million in grant funding via the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) between 2014 and 2021. Over $1.4 million of this went to WIV via EcoHealth Alliance.
US intelligence agencies have issued conflicting reports about the origins of the COVID pandemic, with the FBI being the first to declare a lab leak the most likely explanation for the pandemic.
The Energy Department has also concluded that SARS-CoV-2 most likely leaked from a Chinese lab. The CIA has been unable to come to a determination about pandemic origins. -NY Post
Meanwhile, a senior CIA whistleblower recently told Congress that six analysts who originally concluded a lab-leak was the most likely origin of the pandemic were "given a significant monetary incentive to change their position."
Hey, remember when the Facebook fact checker who worked at the Wuhan lab decreed that a lab-leak was impossible? Good times.
