Newly surfaced emails show connections among a U.S. health agency headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, EcoHealth Alliance, and Chinese scientists. The recently exposed documents also show that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were scrambling to find disinfectant and asked a National Institutes of Health official for help.
Judicial Watch obtained 301 pages of emails and other records from National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases officials who had connections with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. According to the documents that were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by Judicial Watch, the NIAID gave at least nine grants to EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S. nonprofit organization focused on finding unknown viruses and infectious diseases in nature. EcoHealth Alliance reportedly used those NIAID grants to work with Chinese scientists on research such as probing the emergence of a bat coronavirus — years before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Judicial Watch lists the nine grants to EcoHealth Alliance from the NIAID, where Dr. Fauci has been the director since 1984:
- One grant awarded each year between 2010 and 2012 to EcoHealth Alliance, working with Chinese collaborator Jinping Chen of Guangdong Entomological Institute, to study in China “Risk of Viral Emergence from Bats.”
- One grant awarded each year from 2014 to 2017 to EcoHealth Alliance, working with Chinese collaborator Changwen Ke of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of Guangdong, in a project titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.”
- A grant was issued in 2012 to EcoHealth Alliance, working with Xiangming Xiao of the East China Normal University, in a project titled “Comparative Spillover Dynamics of Avian Influenza in Endemic Countries.”
- A grant was issued in 2018 to EcoHealth Alliance, again working with Ke in the project called “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.”
The recently emerged emails also show that scientists at China’s Wuhan lab were scrambling to find disinfectant for equipment, including positive pressure personnel suits.
The physical facilities of the Wuhan Institute of Virology were completed in January 2015, which made it China’s first biosafety level 4 laboratory. BSL-4 laboratories are “used to study infectious agents or toxins that pose a high risk of aerosol-transmitted laboratory infections and life-threatening disease for which no vaccines or therapies are available,” according to the U.S. Health and Human Services.
“Laboratory personnel are required to wear full-body, air-supplied suits, which are the most sophisticated type of PPE,” the HHS states of BSL-4 labs. “All personnel shower before exiting the laboratory and go through a series of procedures designed to fully decontaminate them before leaving.”
The emails from 2016 that were recovered by the FOIA request show a conversation where Wuhan Institute of Virology vice director Yuan Zhiming asked National Institutes of Health virologist Jens Kuhn for help getting disinfectant for the equipment in China’s potentially dangerous BSL-4 lab.
“I am writing to you to ask your help,” Zhiming wrote. “Our laboratory is under operation without pathogens, and we are now looking for the disinfectants for decontamination of airtight suits and surface decontamination indoor decontamination.”
“We have tried several ones do [sic] determine their antiviral efficacy and corrosion to pipeline and wastewater treatment equipment,” he continued. “Unfortunately, we have found a good candidate. I hope you can give us some help, to give us some suggestion for the choice of disinfectants used in P4 laboratory.”
Zhiming allegedly asks what kinds of disinfectants are effective for decontamination of airtight protective clothes, doors, the laboratory, infectious materials, and air decontamination.
