Biden administration suspends funds to Wuhan lab over failure to provide COVID-related info
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Wuhan Institute of Virology’s access to U.S. federal funds has been halted over concerns from the Biden administration about the institute’s failure to provide adequate documentation about their practices.
The Department of Health and Human Services announced the suspension in a Monday letter to the lab, which mentioned efforts to attempt to debar the laboratory in the future.
A memo that was obtained by Bloomberg News stated that a previous review revealed that the Wuhan laboratory does not adequately follow federal regulations. The lab had also failed to send documents about their security and safety measures to American officials.
“This action will ensure the [Wuhan Institute of Virology] does not receive another dollar of federal funding,” an HHS spokesperson said, according to Bloomberg.
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The U.S. government granted the Wuhan lab $1.4 million between 2014 and 2019 through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Last month, it was revealed that Chinese scientist Ben Hu, one of the three researchers who caught a mysterious illness just before the coronavirus pandemic, was partially funded by American grants.
The revelation potentially lends credibility to the lab leak theory of COVID-19, as opposed to the theory that the virus began in a wild animal market.
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One of Hu’s U.S.-funded projects studied whether animal viruses could infect humans and cause a pandemic. Another project researched coronaviruses in bats.
Chinese officials previously maintained that a Wuhan man who became sick on December 8 was the first official case of COVID-19, but the three Wuhan scientists had become sick with the mysterious illness that November.
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Fox News Digital reached out to the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services for statements, but has not heard back.
Fox News Digital’s Brie Stimson contributed to this report.