US shuts controversial $125 mn wildlife virus hunting programme over safety

NEW DELHI: The US government has quietly dropped its $125 million five-year flagship project for hunting viruses among wildlife to prevent human pandemics, over safety concerns, according to a report.

Known as DEEP VZN (pronounced “deep vision”), short for Discovery and Exploration of Emerging Pathogens -- Viral Zoonoses, the project was launched in October 2021 by USAID, an arm of the US State Department.

The agency promoted it as “a critical next step to understand and address the risks posed by zoonotic diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans".

DEEP VZN succeeded an earlier USAID programme called PREDICT and aimed to find previously unknown pathogens from three viral families: coronaviruses; filoviruses, such as Ebola; and paramyxoviruses, including Nipah virus. The aim was to help the world “be better prepared to detect, prevent and respond to future biological threats".

However, an investigation conducted by The BMJ revealed that following early warnings raised by sceptics -- including officials in the Biden White House -- that the DEEP VZN programme could inadvertently ignite a pandemic, the project was quietly shut down in July.

“USAID has determined that investments that focus on the search for and characterisation of unknown viruses prior to spillover into humans are not an Agency global health security priority at this time. As a result, we will cease funding projects with this specific objective,” USAID now confirmed in a statement.

The decision to terminate DEEP VZN “comes amid heightened concerns over the many risks of working with exotic viruses -- including unresolved questions about whether a research mishap or a naturally occurring spillover of virus from an animal species to humans caused the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic”, said investigator David Willman, a journalist.

According to Willman, USAID had hired officials at Washington State University to help administer DEEP VZN, who said that the university’s goal was to collect around 48, 000 samples from wildlife, seeking out “previously unknown” viruses to “identify a subset that pose a significant pandemic threat.”

The university said that the project aimed to “detect and characterise” as many as 12,000 novel viruses over the programme’s five years.

Instead of collecting viruses circulating exclusively among wildlife, USAID said that “the change in Agency priorities” would emphasise actions aimed at improving global “laboratory capacity, disease surveillance, human resources, biosafety and biosecurity, and risk communication and community engagement.”

The agency said that it had informed Washington State University and other stakeholders beginning in July of USAID’s decision “to end the DEEP VZN” project.