Mutations

Renewed interest in a lab-leak hypothesis prompted a few questions about the coronavirus’s origins at a House Appropriations subcommittee meeting Tuesday, amid discussion of the National Institutes of Health budget.

Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) held up a copy of the Wall Street Journal, referring to its recent story about workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China who became sick in November 2019. Harris asked Francis S. Collins, who directs NIH, whether it was correct that $600,000 of $3.7 million in NIH funding, given to the research group EcoHealth Alliance, was directed to the Wuhan facility. That was accurate, Collins said.