On Tuesday night, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a memo proposing to suspend and debar the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) from participating in U.S. government programs. This move comes after a House oversight committee made a memo from the suspension and debarment official at HHS public, directing the federal government to suspend the WIV’s access to government programs, effectively cutting off its access to funding.
The HHS memo outlines a timeline detailing the points of contact between the National Institute of Health (NIH) and its sub-agency, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), with U.S. grant recipient EcoHealth, which conducted gain-of-function research at the WIV. Notably, this research was ordered to be put on pause by the White House since October 2014.
According to the memo, the HHS finds that the information in the record provides sufficient evidence to warrant the immediate suspension of the WIV to protect the public interest. The NIH had given the WIV multiple opportunities to provide supporting materials for its research reported in the grant RPPPRs and I-RPPRs, but the WIV failed to do so. Consequently, the NIH concluded that the WIV’s research likely violated protocols regarding biosafety, a point that remains undisputed.
It is important to note that top health officials have consistently denied claims that COVID-19 originated in a lab and that the NIH funded gain-of-function research. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), vehemently denied such claims during an exchange with Sen. Rand Paul in May 2021, stressing that the NIAID did not fund gain-of-function research on bat-based coronaviruses at the WIV.