Lili Ren, NIAID Subgrantee Tied To Wuhan Lab, Filed Earliest COVID Sequence
Ren filed it to GenBank two weeks before China's CDC released its own sequence, then NIH staff moved to delete it.
- The House Energy and Commerce Committee's Jan. 17, 2024 report, 'Earliest Known SARS-CoV-2 Sequence Released Outside of China,' names Lili Ren as filer on Dec. 28, 2019.
- "Dr. Ren's submission was missing some of the technical (not scientific) information required for publication on GenBank."
- She is a subgrantee of EcoHealth Alliance on the same NIAID grant as the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
Why it matters: The NIAID grant that funded the Wuhan lab also funded the scientist who filed the earliest sequence.
House Energy and Commerce Committee press release ↗ · Sep 16, 20269/16/26