The lab in Wuhan, China suspected by some to be the source of the COVID-19 pandemic will no longer receive U.S. government funding.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology had not received federal dollars since July 2020, and the Department of Health and Human Services formally suspended funding on Monday, CNN reported. HHS officials cited safety concerns and a lack of cooperation as reasons for the suspension.
“The move was undertaken due to WIV’s failure to provide documentation on WIV’s research requested by NIH related to concerns that WIV violated NIH’s biosafety protocols,” an HHS spokesperson said, according to CNN.
The origin of the COVID pandemic that killed at least 7 million people across the world has been hotly debated since the its early days. Several investigations by U.S. intelligence agencies have produced conflicting reports.
Initially, the virus was believed to have spread from live animal sections of a market in Wuhan. But authorities also wanted to investigate the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which studied and tested rare coronaviruses. However, Chinese officials have stifled international investigations into the pandemic’s origins, labeling such probes as political stunts led by the U.S.
Prior to the pandemic, the lab received money from the National Institutes of Health. The NIH initially funded the U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance, which passed some of that money to the lab as part of an international collaboration effort to battle possibly devastating viruses.
The HHS memo that officially cut off funding to the lab said the Wuhan establishment “not only previously violated, but is currently violating, and will continue to violate, protocols of the NIH on biosafety,” according to CNN.
