Keystone Today

A group of Republican lawmakers sent a letter on Feb. 24 to Health and Human Services (HHS) Deputy Inspector General Christi Grimm requesting an investigation into the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) connection with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China.

The letter comes after an editorial questioning the role of the WIV research lab in the pandemic was published by The Washington Post. 

"Recently, The Washington Post, which had regularly dismissed the theory that the COVID-19 pandemic resulted from a lab leak at WIV, finally published an editorial board column embracing the lab leak hypothesis, calling for an investigation into the research lab that was funded in part with U.S. tax dollars from NIH,” the legislators wrote, according to The Epoch Times. 

U.S. intelligence has pointed to P4 lab at the WIV as a likely source of the virus. It has reason to believe several researchers at the institute fell ill with COVID-19-like symptoms in the autumn of 2019, something which the institute denied.

A team of World Health Organization (WHO) experts who visited Wuhan did not rule out the possibility of a virus leak from the P4 lab and WHO Secretary-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there was a need for more research into the origins of the virus.

The 28 Republican legislators criticized the NIH for supporting CCP's Wuhan lab.

“The NIH, unfortunately, has played a major role in supporting WIV and this treacherous research and the promotion of spurious claims dismissing the NIH-funded lab’s potential role in the COVID-19 pandemic,” the letter reads, according to The Epoch Times.

The coronavirus pandemic has claimed the lives of more than half a million Americans and almost 2.5 million worldwide.

They are questioning how much the federal health agency knew about the coronavirus research at WIV and if the NIH was informed of the possibility of a pandemic risk.

“In light of all this, we are gravely concerned about the NIH’s relationship with both EcoHealth and WIV, and the agency’s handling of allegations that the COVID-19 pandemic was potentially caused by an NIH-funded laboratory at WIV. We also are alarmed that WIV is eligible to receive additional funding from the NIH through 2024,” the letter states according to The Epoch Times. 

The lab is partially funded with U.S. tax dollars. The funds were made available to the Wuhan lab through NIH subgrants from the EcoHealth Alliance nonprofit group.