United States cuts off funds to Wuhan Institute over Covid stonewalling: Report

Wuhan Institute of Virology’s access to United States federal funds was halted by the Biden administration for failing to provide documents about safety and security measures, according to a memo obtained by Bloomberg News.

As per the reports, on Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) informed the Wuhan Institute about the suspension and also notified the lab that it is seeking to cut it off permanently, as per the memo.

A review, that was started by HHS in the month of September last year, raised concerns that the facility based in Wuhan was breaching the biosafety protocols and was also not compliant with US regulations, added the report. Notably, Wuhan is where the virus first emerged.

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“This action will ensure the [Wuhan Institute of Virology] does not receive another dollar of federal funding,” the report quoted a department spokesperson as saying in a statement.

The lab has not received any funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) since July 2020.

The institute has become a major point of discussion regarding the origins of thecoronaviruswhich claimed the lives of nearly 7 million people acrossthe world. Some authorities, including FBI Director Christopher Wray, suspect that the virus could have likely originated in the facility.

The US spokesperson on Monday said that the Wuhan lab has not responded to federal officials yet since the United States decided to cut future funding that would include new contracts grants and other transactions.

In the year 2014, the NIH awarded a grant to EcoHealth Alliance, a US-based organisation that is focused on preventing infectious diseases, for "Understanding the risk of bat coronavirus emergence."

The Wuhan Institute of Virology received the grant and EcoHealth Alliance also channelled United States Agency for International Development funds to the lab.

China deletes COVID-19 mortalitydata

Fresh accusations have been levelled against China and its intention of handling coronavirus (COVID-19) data. As per the report by Financial Times, one of the most populous provinces in the nation has deleted mortality data that indicated the high death toll caused by Beijing's relaxation of Covid regulations at the end of last year.

As per the report published on Tuesday (July 18), FT referred to the statistics released by Zhejiang province on Thursday, which showed the number of cremations in the wealthy coastal region during the first quarter of the year jumped 73 per cent from a year earlier to 171,000.

The amount was much higher than the 99,000 and 91,000 deaths reported in the same time period in 2022 and 2021, respectively. Chinese social media was abuzz following the data report, after which Zhejiang took the numbers offline by Monday.

Since thepandemic started, experts have called out Beijing for its dubious statistics of the pandemic. Towards the end of the year 2019, the first known case was reported in China, and when it started to spread, it was declared a public health emergency of international concern in January 2020.

(With inputs from agencies)

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