Shi Zhengli, a senior bat coronavirus researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, has defended it in the face of demands for an investigation into the origins of Covid-19 - including the likelihood it was leaked from a Wuhan laboratory.
"How on earth can I offer up evidence for something where there is no evidence?" she told The New York Times. "I don't know how the world has come to this - constantly pouring filth on an innocent scientist," she said in a text message.
Meanwhile, a federal watchdog has launched an investigation into the National Institutes of Health's grant program during the continuing controversy over funds transferred to the Wuhan institute.
The investigation, first reported by CNN, spans the time when the New York-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance got a $3.75 million grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health to conduct research called "Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence."
EcoHealth allocated $826,277 from the initial grant to the Wuhan laboratory as a sub-grant between fiscal 2014 and 2019.
According to internal U.S. National Institutes of Health emails obtained earlier June by the conservative nonprofit Judicial Watch, the Wuhan laboratory was due to earn $1.5 million in federal grant money through EcoHealth between mid-2014 and mid-2025. Over the same period, EcoHealth would have earned about $7.4 million.
In testimony before a House Appropriations panel in May, chief White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci understated the amount and length of the laboratory's funding commitment, saying the sub-grant from EcoHealth "was about $600,000 over five years - so it was a modest amount."
There is circumstantial evidence the pandemic was caused by a virus leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology into the city - which has a population of around 11 million people.
In May, U.S. President Joe Biden directed intelligence agencies to look into the origin of the pandemic, including the laboratory leak theory.
