Newsweek has highlighted that the Chinese Scientists who were said to have been doing 'crazy' things with coronavirus in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, were funded by the White House senior health advisor Dr Anthony Fauci just last year.

The report notes that in 2019 Fauci, as head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), backed the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding commitment of $3.7 million for a further six years of research on bat coronaviruses in the Chinese lab.

The report also noted that the research outline included manipulating viruses in the lab in order to gauge the potential for infection in humans.

The funding, which has now been halted by the Trump administration, was in addition to the previous $3.7 million provided to the Chinese lab between 2014-2019.

Therefore, a total of $7.4 million had been provided for the Chinese coronavirus research, according to the report.

According to Rutgers University infectious disease expert Richard Ebright, the description of the research indicates that experiments were being carried out that would "enhance the ability of bat coronavirus to infect human cells and laboratory animals using techniques of genetic engineering."