Explainer: Why the U.S. has banned funding for Chinese lab at center of pandemic origin dispute

In a move that has more symbolic than practical impact, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has imposed new sanctions on a Chinese lab at the center of the debate about the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. A nine-page HHS memo made public by a House subcommittee that ’s investigating the pandemic ’s origin suspends and proposes debarment of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) “from participating in United States Federal Government procurement and nonprocurement programs.” In effect, this bars WIV from receiving U.S. government funding now and possibly ever. The memo says the suspension is necessary “to mitigate any potential public health risk.” WIV, which has long studied bat coronaviruses, has been a key suspect in the theory that SARS-CoV-2 leaked from a Chinese lab and triggered the pandemic, although no compelling evidence supports this possibility. An alternate hypothesis contends that the virus jumped from bats into humans, likely through an “intermediate host” species that vendors sold at Wuhan ’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. The dueling theories have set off debates between Republicans and Democrats in Congress, and even within divisions of the U .S. intelligence community that have investigated COVID-19’s possible origin. The new memo is being applauded by lab-leak propone...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news