Republican Representative Matt Rosendale this month successfully added an amendment to a pending government spending bill that attempts to withhold funding from Rocky Mountain Laboratories, a facility operated by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Hamilton where scientists study viruses.
Rosendale’s claims on social media and elsewhere tap into allegations that the United States government helped create COVID-19 and that former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci directly participated in the transmission of the COVID-19 virus.
“The laboratory spent millions to infect bats with a coronavirus obtained directly from the Wuhan Lab one year before COVID,” Rosendale told members of the U.S. House of Representatives earlier in November. “Specifically, under Dr. Fauci’s tenure, Rocky Mountain Laboratories infected Egyptian fruit bats with a coronavirus obtained from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
According to a statement YPR received from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Rosendale incorrectly describes a study with Egyptian fruit bats:
“Recent online coverage has erroneously characterized a research study conducted in December 2016 at Rocky Mountain Laboratories and published in 2018 in the journal Viruses. In the study, RML researchers studied WIV-1, a coronavirus, in Egyptian fruit bats.
WIV-1 is a different virus than the SARS-CoV-2 virus involved with the COVID-19 pandemic.
The virus used in these experiments was not shipped from China. Rather, it was generated using common laboratory techniques, based on genetic information that was publicly shared by Chinese scientists.
The research was conducted at the highest level of biosafety, BSL-4. As noted in the published manuscript, the virus did not replicate well in the bats.
Scientists at RML have research expertise in coronaviruses, beginning with the original SARS-CoV-1 outbreak in 2002-03 to MERS-CoV in 2012 and most recently SARS-CoV-2, generating information that is critical to understanding these viruses and developing appropriate interventions.”
The spending bill and its amendments have yet to come to a vote before Congress, which passed a temporary funding bill to avoid a government shutdown by its deadline.
