A NIH spokesperson denied that the government "deleted" genetic sequencing information on the COVID-19 virus from a Chinese laboratory, however the data was "suppressed," according to an NIH whistleblower.
“The headline says the sequences were deleted which is inaccurate. They were not deleted. This is a really important point, and I’ve highlighted what did happen from what we provided to you earlier this week,” NIH Media Branch Chief Amanda Fine told The Epoch Times in a March 31 email.
Fine was referencing to a March 29 article titled “NIH Deleted Info Received From Wuhan Lab on CCP Virus Genetic Sequencing, Watchdog’s FOIA Finds.” The following is the information Fine mentioned as having been sent to the media by NIH earlier in the week:
“’In June 2020, in response to a request by the same [Wuhan] researcher, National Center for Biotechnology [NCBI] gave the sequence data the status of “withdrawn,” which removes sequencing data from all public means of...