The Biden administration has formally barred U.S. funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and signaled it would cut off the lab permanently.
The Department of Health and Human Services has determined the lab is “not compliant with federal regulations and is not presently responsible,” according to a Monday memo first obtained by Bloomberg News.
The Wuhan lab, which hasn’t received U.S. funding since mid-2020, is at the heart of probes into whether the pandemic-causing coronavirus slipped into humans from nature or as the result of a lab leak. Researchers at the lab studied bat coronaviruses.
Congressional investigators have faulted researchers over safety protocols and whether it was prudent for a U.S.-funded group, EcoHealth, to work alongside Chinese researchers.
HHS decided to cut off the Wuhan lab after a lengthy review of its procedures and China’s failure to turn over key information to the National Institutes of Health.
NIH concluded the lab “not only previously violated, but is currently violating, and will continue to violate, protocols of the NIH on biosafety,” the HHS memo said.
Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee said the findings mirror their own and the prohibition on new funding should have come earlier.
“It’s past time that the Biden administration made this decision, but they deserve no credit for finally doing what the evidence and facts demanded. It is outrageous that it took them so long. HHS must now consider a similar debarment for EcoHealth Alliance,” committee Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Washington Republican, said with key subcommittee leaders.
Sen. Joni Ernst, Iowa Republican, said U.S. dollars should not have flowed to the Wuhan lab in the first place. She pledged to root out other questionable lab funding.
“I am committed to making sure no other batty studies at the expense of taxpayers are flying under the radar and will continue to work to ensure full public transparency for every penny sent to an institution in China,” she said.
The COVID-19 pandemic started in Wuhan, the central Chinese city that is home to the major virology institute.
A series of congressional reports say there is evidence the virus, which killed more than 1.1 million people in the U.S. alone, might have leaked from the lab, though investigators haven’t found a smoking gun to confirm the theory.
U.S. and global health authorities say it will be difficult to confirm the source of the virus without more cooperation from Beijing.
Chinese authorities bristle at accusations of poor lab safety and have called on U.S. labs to review their own security, suggesting without evidence that the virus could have originated within American borders.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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