Politics NEW: USAID Caught Sending ‘Thousands’ Of Viruses To Wuhan Lab

By Mark Steffen

A joint public health program between the U.S. and China has been linked to the transfer of viruses that eventually made their way to the lab in Wuhan where the COVID-19 outbreak likely began, according to internal documents from USAID.

The U.S. Agency for International Development was officially shut down last week, capping an ignominious end to an agency that has been targeted for years by Republicans for its spending on humanitarian projects around the world. With its closure has come the release of a new trove of documents outlining how the agency paid for virus samples to be sent to the Chinese lab where gain-of-function research was being performed on deadly pathogens.

A $210 million program within USAID, known internally as PREDICT, ostensibly sought to prepare for global pandemics by partnering with virologists to gauge how such an outbreak might occur. Backed by researchers from the University of California-Davis, samples of viruses around the world were collected and shipped to the Wuhan lab for storage after a lack of funding kept the program from maintaining its own long-term stock.

In Yunnan Province, China, approximately 11,000 viral samples were collected during the 10-year program and sent to Wuhan, despite having no formal agreement with the lab where viruses were being engineered to become even greater dangers to the public.

A 2019 document about PREDICT is short on details. One passage reads, “No need [sic] information from Yunnan. They were never an official lab partner for PREDICT. All samples they helped collect [sic] are sent to, tested, and stored in Wuhan.”

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