The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) transferred thousands of viral samples to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China over a 10-year period without securing a formal agreement to govern the exchange, according to newly obtained internal documents.
These documents, which were not previously disclosed, highlight significant gaps in oversight and accountability during a global public health program partially funded by the American government.
At the center of the matter is USAID’s $210 million PREDICT program, led by the University of California-Davis.
The initiative collected viral samples across several countries, including China’s Yunnan Province, a region known to host coronaviruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19.
The program aimed to identify pandemic threats but lacked clear protocols for long-term sample storage and tracking once federal funding concluded in 2019.
Documentation from the program, reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF), revealed that 11,000 samples were exported to WIV with no indication of safeguards to ensure the materials were not diverted for unauthorized use, such as bioweapons development, or that the U.S. government could later access them for investigation.
[predict] Re: Action required: PREDICT Close Out Sample Disposition Plan by Red Voice News
(LifeZette, 7/9/2025) (Archive)
As a sidenote, our PREDICT tag timeline reveals this story: