Pre-Pandemic Safety Concerns Uncovered at Wuhan Lab, US Researchers Reveal
US researchers had raised serious safety concerns about the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in 2017, three years before the Covid-19 pandemic, but their warnings were ignored or censored. Newly obtained records reveal that an NIH official had expressed alarm over the WIV's plan to engineer Ebola strains and the lab's shortage of trained technicians. The official was instructed to erase these safety failures from her report to avoid angering China. Similar concerns over genetically engineered viruses were dismissed by US energy officials a year prior. The WIV, where the FBI believes Covid leaked from, continued to receive international support, including funding from the US, despite its inadequate safety measures.