Lawmakers have condemned the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) decision to re-activate a controversial federal grant to EcoHealth Alliance that was suspended three years ago over concerns of grant term violations.
EcoHealth Alliance, the nonprofit organization that for years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic used NIH funds to conduct coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, the Chinese facility under scrutiny for its work on dangerous bat coronaviruses, announced the new 4-year grant to be used to study “the risk of bat coronavirus spillover emergence” in a May 8 press release.
Under the terms of the grant (pdf), EcoHealth, headed by British zoologist Peter Daszak, will receive a total of $$4,325,005 over a four-year period via NIH’s National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which was headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci until last December. The award amount for 2023 is $576,290….