The Chinese laboratory suspected of leaking coronavirus has been stripped of United States government funding for 10 years after conducting dangerous experiments that increased the potency of coronaviruses before the pandemic.
The US Department of Human Health and Services (HHS) said it was debarring the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) after documents showed scientists had inserted new spike proteins into four bat coronaviruses.
In the experiments, which occurred between 2018 and 2019, one chimeric virus killed 75 per cent of infected humanised mice within two weeks.
The HHS said that the experiments had increased viral activity more than tenfold, in clear violation of government grant guidelines.
WIV was just eight miles from where the first cases of Covid emerged and had a history of working on gain-of-function experiments – work that increases the potency of viruses. This led many people to suspect that the virus could have leaked.
In the months before the pandemic, the institute had registered patents for repairs to ventilation symptoms and broken seals and is believed to have worked on viruses at inappropriate biosafety levels.
The Chinese authorities have refused to allow a proper investigation and have blocked attempts to access laboratories, research notebooks or sample databases.
The memo said that the US National Institutes of Health had been trying to contact WIV for two years for information about the experiments but had received no response.
The HHS warned that such experiments may still be ongoing and could have had “potential health consequences and repercussions”.
“WIV conducted an experiment that violated the terms of the grant regarding viral activity, which possibly did lead or could lead to health issues or other unacceptable outcomes,” said the notice of debarment.
“WIV has not acknowledged the violations, has not cooperated with the government to address the violations, has not accepted responsibility for the violations, and therefore presumably has taken no action to eliminate the risk to the government in conducting business transactions with WIV presently or into the future.”
It concluded: “There is risk that WIV not only previously violated, but is currently violating, and will continue to violate, protocols of the National Institutes of Health on biosafety.”
