5 revelations from the House COVID-19 report

By CP Staff, Wednesday, December 04, 2024

Security personnel stand guard outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan as members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus make a visit to the institute in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province on Feb. 3, 2021. | HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images

NIH funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan

One of the report's most significant revelations is that the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) "funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology," located near the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak.

This research, which involved altering viruses to increase their transmissibility, was considered a potential source of the COVID-19 virus in the early stages of the pandemic.

According to the report, the funds for this research were funneled through EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based nonprofit, and were authorized under the Obama administration. In 2014, EcoHealth Alliance was awarded a $3.7 million grant from the NIH to study possible coronaviruses from bats.

From that grant, $600,000 went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The project, which was renewed in 2019 under the Trump administration, was later pulled following the outbreak.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), an agency under the NIH, told a Senate panel in May 2021 that gain-of-function research linked to the coronavirus outbreak was "evaluated multiple times by qualified people to not fall under the gain-of-function definition."