Dr Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, reportedly backed funding for a controversial lab in Wuhan, China that has been studying the coronavirus in bats and is blamed for causing the Covid-19 pandemic, The New York Post reports.
Dr. Fauci’s National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) allegedly paid out $7.4 million to the Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratory, according to Newsweek. The National Institutes of Health, which oversees the NIAID stopped all US government funding to the lab last week.
“At this time, NIH does not believe that the current project outcomes align with the program goals and agency priorities,” an official wrote in a letter obtained by Politico.
There is “increasing confidence” among officials in the Trump administration that the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab is the original site of the virus. A report by Fox News said embassy officials warned in January 2018 about inadequate safety there.
The NIH defended its funding of the lab in a statement to Newsweek.
“Most emerging human viruses come from wildlife, and these represent a significant threat to public health and biosecurity in the US and globally,” the statement read. “Scientific research indicates that there is no evidence that suggests the virus was created in a laboratory.”
On Sunday, Rudy Giuliani questioned why the U.S. gave money to the lab. during an interview on The Cats Roundtable.
“Back in 2014, the Obama administration prohibited the U.S. from giving any money to any laboratory, including in the U.S., that was fooling around with these viruses. Prohibited! Despite that, Dr. Fauci gave $3.7 million to the Wuhan laboratory — and then even after the State Department issued reports about how unsafe that laboratory was, and how suspicious they were in the way they were developing a virus that could be transmitted to humans,” he claimed.
He added, “We never pulled that money. So, something here is going on, John. I don’t want to make any accusations. But there was more knowledge about what was going on in China with our scientific people than they disclosed to us when this first came out. Just think of it: If this laboratory turns out to be the place where the virus came from, we paid for it. We paid for the damn virus that’s killing us.”