NIH Denies Creating SARS-CoV-2, But Grant Recipient Won’t Disclose Records That Could Prove ItFauci denies his agency’s grant for EcoHealth Alliance’s research at a Wuhan lab led to Covid-19, but full lab records remain undisclosed.
By Eleanor Bartow
February 14, 2022
Anthony Fauci denies that his U.S. agency’s grant to study bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology could have led to Covid-19, but the grant recipient, EcoHealth Alliance, still has not released records of the viruses it kept at the lab. Available records reveal EcoHealth had plans to experiment on many unknown viruses, with the Chinese managing virus identification and access to the research.
Fauci cannot, as he does, say definitively that his agency’s grant did not lead to SARS-CoV-2 without the full, original laboratory records for the grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
The National Institutes of Health is still asking for some lab records from EcoHealth, but EcoHealth has said it does not have access to them, as the records were created by and retained by Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). China has blocked investigators from inspecting all of the WIV’s laboratory records and databases, including a key database taken offline months before the Covid outbreak, and has acknowledged destroying some lab samples of coronaviruses.
The lack of lab records does not prove Fauci’s agency funded the creation of Covid-19. Scientists have not released a determination of the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid; two leading theories are either animal crossover or a lab leak.
But Fauci knew in January 2020, before lockdowns, that his agency had failed in its oversight of EcoHealth and was lacking an important record: an annual progress report due September 30, 2019. It was eventually submitted two years late, and some suspect the report was revised from an earlier version.
Plans to Experiment with Pandora’s Box of Viruses* * *
Source:
https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/14/nih-denies-creating-sars-cov-2-but-grant-recipient-wont-disclose-records-that-could-prove-it/
