Fauci and Rand Paul Clash Over Pandemic Origins, US Funding for Wuhan Lab

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, once again found himself embroiled in a heated back-and-forth with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) during a Tuesday Senate coronavirus hearing, this time over accusations that he funded a Wuhan lab to develop COVID-19.

Paul, who signaled on Monday that he was going to grill Fauci on the subject, alleged that gain-of-function research to mutate animal viruses to infect humans at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been funded by the National Institutes of Health, something that Fauci strongly disputed. “With all...

Anthony Fauci and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) got into a heated debate at a Senate health committee hearing on Tuesday, clashing over whether funding from the National Institutes of Health was used for risky "gain-of-function" research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Why it matters: Questions remain about the origins of the coronavirus and the so-called "lab leak hypothesis" — the theory that the virus resulted from experiments in the Wuhan lab that accidentally spilled over, which the head of the World Health Organization has said should be investigated further.