In 2023, the Government Accountability Office reported that Fauci's branch of the NIH gave $1,413,720 to the Wuhan Institute of Virology during 2014-2019 via a nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance. Some of this money was used to fund "genetic experiments to combine naturally occurring bat coronaviruses with SARS and MERS viruses, resulting in hybridized" coronavirus strains. Buried in an appendix, the report reveals that the research to generate these coronaviruses "was not subject to" a "gain-of-function research funding pause" and that the lab conducted a "limited" experiment "to test whether the spike protein from naturally occurring bat coronaviruses" could bind "to the human ACE2 receptor in a mouse model." NIH claims this research "could not have been the source of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and the Covid-19 pandemic," but emails released in 2023 prove that Fauci and NIH Director Francis Collins suppressed evidence that the virus was created in a lab.