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VERIFY: No, this photo does not show President Obama in a lab in China in 2015.

Social media is filled with rumors and unsupported claims. That’s where the Verify team comes in—we take your questions to vetted experts to get you the truth.

WASHINGTON, D.C., USA — QUESTION:

Is this a photo of President Obama, Dr. Fauci and Melinda Gates at a lab in China?

ANSWER:

No.

SOURCE:

Dr. Francis Collins, Director, National Institutes of Health

PROCESS:

There is a photo circulating on social media warning, "Dr. Fauci, Melinda Gates and Barack Obama were at the Wuhan Lab in 2015.”

Posters then go on to say there’s some sort of link between the three and a conspiracy theory that coronavirus was made in a lab.

Right of the bat, we can tell you the photo is real, but the description and comments contain a lot of misinformation.

Our source for this one is Dr. Francis Collins.

He’s been the Director of the National Institutes of Health since 2009.

We tracked the first instance of this photo to his December 2014 blog post titled, “President’s Visit to NIH Highlights Research on Ebola.”

Credit: NIH

The caption includes all the info about what’s really going on in the photo, including that it was taken at the NIH, Bethesda, Maryland Campus.

It also says that’s Dr. Nancy Sullivan of NIH’s are discussing Ebola research with President Obama as Dr. Fauci and HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell, not Melinda Gates.

So, false, this photo is not of President Obama, Dr. Fauci and Melinda Gates at a lab in China before the outbreak.

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