US quietly shuts down $125million USAID project to find novel viruses in Asia and Africa due to fears it could ignite a pandemic

US officials are quietly shutting down a $125 million taxpayer-funded project to hunt for new viruses, fearing it could spark another pandemic.

DEEP VZN – pronounced deep vision – was launched in October 2021 with the aim of finding and studying new pathogens in wildlife in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

While the research was designed to prevent human outbreaks and pandemics, critics, including officials in the Biden administration, fear it could do the opposite and have expressed fears about the potentially “catastrophic risks” of the virus hunt.

And their concerns are heightened by the growing suspicion that Covid originated in an American-sponsored laboratory in Wuhan, China — a theory the FBI endorses.

The project was scheduled to run until 2026, but DEEP VZN was shut down in July 2023 without a formal public announcement.

The announcement of the closure came in on Thursday a mark published in The BMJ by investigative journalist David Williams.

While this is the most recent investigation to come to light, it is far from the first investigation the US has conducted on the matter.

For more than a decade, the government has funded international projects aimed at identifying exotic viruses among wild animals that could one day infect humans, and has sent millions to support several similar projects.

Money has flowed abroad from the Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars.

DEEP VZN, which stands for Discovery & Exploration of Emerging Pathogens – Viral Zoonoses, was launched in October 2021 by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and less than two years later, USAID officials informed members of Senate committees that had jurisdiction over DEEP VZN the program was closed.

The premature closure of the project came abruptly and was privately communicated to Senate aides by the office of Atul Gawande, USAID’s assistant administrator for global health care.

The news was hidden in a hundreds-page congressional budget document and discussed during interviews Mr. Williams conducted with federal lawmakers and investigators.

At the launch, USAID said the “ambitious new project” aimed to work with partner countries and the global community to “build better preparedness for future global health threats.”

The organization said the project would “strengthen the global capacity to detect and understand the risks of viral transmission from wildlife to humans that could trigger a new pandemic.”

“The COVID-19 pandemic has shown how infectious diseases threaten all of society, disrupting people’s lives and attacking societies at their very core.

“It’s also a strong reminder of the connection between animals, humans and the environment, and the effect an emerging pathogen passing to humans can have on people’s health and the global economy.”

The project was conducted by scientists from Washington State University Paul Allen School for Global Health and other research and partner entities.

The goal was to collect more than 800,000 samples, mostly from wild animals, over the five-year period to identify a subset of “previously unknown” viruses that “present a significant pandemic threat.”

The university attempted to track 12,000 new viruses over the life of the program, and scientists hoped the information would not only help prevent future pandemics, but better prepare health officials should one occur.

“DEEP VZN is a critical next step in the evolution of USAID’s work to understand and address the risks of zoonotic diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans.”

However, in a statement on the closure of the program, USAID said it had determined that the research was “not a global healthcare priority at this time” and that its decision reflected “the relative risks and impacts of our programming.”

Now, the organization said it will focus on improving lab capacity, disease monitoring, human resources, biosafety and security, and risk communication.

Almost immediately after its launch, the program drew criticism from a variety of government officials and advisers, including health care, biosafety, and security officials, as well as senators and White House officials.

In a private letter to a USAID administrator in November 2021, members and staff of both the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee said they were “particularly concerned” about DEEP VZN’s investigation into “studying unknown viruses in areas with a high risk’. of the transition from animal to human.’

They continued: “Given all the open questions surrounding the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, it is critical that this initiative is adequately vetted.”

In addition, a biosafety, biosafety and White House official advised the same USAID administrator to shut down DEEP VZN in December 2021, Mr. Williams wrote.

After reviewing the project to ensure it would be conducted in a way to adequately manage risks, USAID told researchers in March and November 2022 not to collect virus samples until proper safety protocols had been assessed.

However, federal records show that USAID continued to fund research in spring 2023 while project leaders established more laboratories, technicians and support staff needed to process the amount of genetic samples collected.

In interviews, White House officials told Williams that the decision to shut down DEEP VZN reflected the “commitment of the Biden administration to more rigorously weigh the risks and potential benefits of research projects.”

The officials referred to policy recommendations that supported research like that of DEEP VZN only if there was no other, safer method that would yield the same benefits, and only after “unnecessary risks have been eliminated.”

The hunt for viruses has been a point of contention long before the Covid pandemic, and scientists have dismissed the idea that it could lead to life-saving drugs or prevent a pandemic.

Now, in the aftermath of the pandemic, more people in the scientific community have raised additional concerns, warning that the risks of collecting animal-to-animal-transmitted viruses should be strongly considered, as this type of research typically involves the collection of animal blood, feces or saliva. and transporting samples to laboratories for analysis.

A misstep at any point in the process could have a catastrophic outcome and result in a new pandemic.

In May, three leaders of the Republican-controlled House Energy and Commerce Committee asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate the benefits and risks of the virus hunt, citing concerns.

The lawmakers said in a letter to GAO that while similar research has identified thousands of new viruses, scientists question whether collecting animal viruses “can accurately predict the viruses that can infect humans, or what the effect would be if and when humans are subsequently infected.’

They continued, according to The BMJ feature, warning that others in the community “have suggested that these types of programs pose the risk of inadvertent infection of field or laboratory personnel, which could result in an accidental outbreak.”

GAO began an audit of DEEP VZN in response to the letter, but told Mr Williams it would not be completed until spring 2024.