USAID Shipped 11,000 Virus Samples to Wuhan Lab Without Formal Agreement or Oversight, Documents Reveal
by Worthy News Washington D.C. Bureau Staff
(Worthy News) – The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) facilitated the transfer of nearly 11,000 virus samples from Yunnan Province to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) over a 10-year period, despite having no formal agreement in place with the controversial lab, according to newly released documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
The samples — collected through USAID’s $210 million global public health initiative known as PREDICT — were intended to help identify emerging infectious diseases. But internal memos show the virus samples, which included strains from humans, bats, and rodents, were sent to a Chinese lab notorious for its lax biosafety practices and ties to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) with minimal documentation, oversight, or contractual safeguards.
“There was no formal chain of custody, no testing protocols, and no U.S. government access requirements,” said Reuben Guttman, a government oversight expert. “This is not how a global health initiative is supposed to operate. It’s a blueprint for disaster.”
The documents, reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation, show USAID subcontractors acknowledged the lack of formal partnerships or contracts in internal communications. “No need [sic] information from Yunnan. They were never an official lab partner for PREDICT. All samples they helped collected [sic] are sent to, tested, and stored in Wuhan,” one UC-Davis PREDICT staffer wrote in a 2019 email.
The revelations come amid growing scrutiny of the U.S. government’s role in pandemic preparedness programs that may have inadvertently contributed to the conditions leading to the COVID-19 outbreak. One of the closest known viral relatives to SARS-CoV-2 was collected through the PREDICT program, though whether that virus played a direct role in the pandemic remains unproven.
Adding to the controversy is the fact that two key figures overseeing the project — WIV virologist Ben Hu and EcoHealth Alliance’s Peter Daszak — have both faced intense scrutiny. Hu reportedly became ill with COVID-like symptoms in late 2019, while Daszak has been banned from receiving federal funds due to what the U.S. government deemed “inadequate oversight” of his work with the Wuhan lab.
The lack of a sample retention clause in the PREDICT contract means many of the virus specimens — potentially crucial to determining the origins of COVID-19 — are now inaccessible to U.S. investigators.
“The PREDICT grift did none of the things it should have done,” said Dr. Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University. “There should have been contractual terms requiring all samples, or at least copies of samples, to be transferred to and stored by a U.S. government facility.”
The documents were obtained by U.S. Right to Know, a nonprofit investigative newsroom, which filed suit after repeated delays in document production.
The Biden administration has not commented on the findings, but the State Department told the Daily Caller that “investigations involving USAID’s former funding of global health awards remain active and ongoing.”
Meanwhile, the official shuttering of USAID — completed this week under an order from Secretary of State Marco Rubio — has ignited a fierce debate over the agency’s legacy. A recent Lancet study claimed the end of USAID could correlate with up to 14 million preventable deaths globally due to disrupted aid programs.
But Rubio defended the move in a statement Tuesday. “Beyond creating a globe-spanning NGO industrial complex at taxpayer expense, USAID has little to show since the end of the Cold War,” he said. “Development objectives have rarely been met, instability has often worsened, and anti-American sentiment has only grown.”
As global leaders grapple with preventing the next pandemic, the controversy over USAID’s shipments to Wuhan is likely to fuel demands for stricter controls and transparency in future international health programs — especially when national security may be on the line.
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