Anthony Fauci defends US funding coronavirus research at Wuhan lab

Dr. Anthony Fauci on Sunday defended the US giving hundreds of thousands of dollars for research at a Wuhan lab studying whether bat coronaviruses could be transmitted to humans — saying that it would have been “negligent” not to do so.

“It was a… proposal that was peer-reviewed and given a very high rating for the importance of why it should be done,” Fauci told CNN anchor Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.” “[The proposal was] to be able to go and do a survey of what was going on among the bat population because everyone in the world was trying to figure out what the original source of the original SARS CoV-1 was,” he continued.