The new National Institutes of Health chief declared Friday that the Trump administration won't pursue lockdowns in future pandemics and his agency has stopped all forms of dangerous gain-of-function research, ending two controversial legacies of the Dr. Anthony Fauci era inside the government's premier health research institution.

"As far as the NIH, we've paused every single project that even is anywhere within the vicinity of something that could be gain of function, and the White House is working on a policy ...(that) will make it so that it never happens again," Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the NIH director, told the Just the News, No Noise television show.

"Nowhere in the United States Government will we invest in a project that poses a risk of catastrophic harm to the American people ever again," he added.

Gain of function research is a controversial form of science that tries to enhance deadly viruses and bacteria to make them more deadly in an effort to study future pandemic responses.

It was stopped by President Barack Obama but then revived in 2017 under Fauci's leadership, and it is believed to be behind a lab leak in Wuhan, China, that the FBI and other federal agencies believe may have started the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Bhattacharya said the Biden administration had confusing rules that left the possibility of such risky research to continue to slip through, and he has put a clear mandate in place.  

"What we're doing is we're saying there has to be a comprehensive risk assessment of every single project that has anywhere close to the vicinity of being dangerous gain of function," he explained. "And if it's dangerous gain of function, the answer is, 'No, you can't do it.'"

He said the NIH model is going to be the center of a larger government-wide policy being finalized by the White House.

"So we're headed toward a comprehensive policy for the entire federal government where that's the case. As far as the NIH is concerned, I've already implemented a policy like that, where we pause dozens of grants, and as soon as the new policy comes up, we'll submit them to the new independent board that's going to be looking at this," he said.

Bhattacharya said the government still has much work to do to reform pandemic preparations from the failures of COVID-19 outbreak, but that one tactic used then and favored by Fauci -- full community lockdowns -- will certainly not be used under this Trump administration.

"I think I can tell you that the appetite for lockdowns in this administration is basically zero. So I don't think we would have the same kind of approach. But we do need to have a national conversation about what happened during COVID, especially during the Biden administration, with the vaccine mandates and all that.

Pandemic prevention "shouldn't just be some secret plan sitting in the government vault that you pull out if something terrible happens," he said.

"We saw during COVID every single person's life was affected in some, mostly for the worse," he added. "...I'll tell you under my watch, I will never advocate and the NIH will not be advocating for lockdowns ever again."