US suspends funds to Covid firm at centre of Wuhan ‘lab leak’ storm handed taxpayer cash to test pandemic viruses
THE US government has suspended funding to an organisation at the centre of the storm over the origins of Covid.
EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based non-profit, has been under fire since the early days of the pandemic over its bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The group has faced scrutiny over whether Covid may have emerged from the research at the lab that was funded by the US government.
In a letter, the US Department of Health and Human Services told EcoHealth Alliance that it has now been suspended from receiving government funds.
The department is also proposing to formally ban the organisation from receiving any funding, the letter said.
Grants from US agencies, including National Institutes of Heath, make up most of EcoHealth Alliance’s budget – which was about $14million in 2022.
But last year, a government investigation found the organisation had “mismanaged” grants in Wuhan.
The funding suspension comes after The Sun revealed the US government has dished out some $60million of public money to the organisation since the start of the pandemic – despite questions still raging over its work at the Wuhan lab.
And they have continued to collect and test hundreds of samples of bat coronaviruses since 2020 with US government funding.
Earlier this month, Dr Peter Daszak, the company’s boss, was quizzed before Congress.
The suspension of funding for the non-profit has been welcomed by lawmakers investigating the origins of Covid.
Congressman Brad Wenstrup – who chairs the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic – said: “EcoHealth Alliance and Dr Peter Daszak should never again receive a single penny from the US taxpayer.
“EcoHealth facilitated gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China without proper oversight, willingly violated multiple requirements of its multimillion-dollar National Institutes of Health grant, and apparently made false statements to the NIH.
“These actions are wholly abhorrent, indefensible, and must be addressed with swift action.
“EcoHealth’s immediate funding suspension and future debarment is not only a victory for the US taxpayer, but also for American national security and the safety of citizens worldwide.”
The subcommittee’s ranking member, Representative Raul Ruiz, also welcomed the move – pointing to EcoHealth’s “failure” to “meet the utmost standards of transparency and accountability to the American public”.
The suspension comes one day before a top official from the National Institutes of Health – which funded the Wuhan lab – is scheduled to testify before Congress.
In a joint statement, lawmakers Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Brett Guthrie and Morgan Griffith said the announcement “is welcomed but long overdue”.
“Not only did EcoHealth Alliance intend to mislead the federal government through research proposals, but EcoHealth’s President Peter Daszak also lied to Congress.
“This deception and obstruction alone are enough to merit debarment and come in addition to EcoHealth’s mishandling of taxpayer-funded grant money and failure to conduct meaningful oversight of the now-debarred Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
EcoHealth Alliance: Factfile
ECOHEALTH Alliance is a New York-based NGO with a mission to protect people, animals, and the environment from emerging infectious diseases.
Founded in 1971 as Wildlife Preservation Trust International before changing its name in 2010, it focuses on preventing pandemics by carrying out research in disease hotspots around the world.
After the outbreak of Covid, EcoHealth Alliance’s ties with the Wuhan Institute of Virology faced scrutiny in relation to the origins of the virus.
Before the pandemic, EcoHealth Alliance was the only US-based organisation researching coronaviruses in China – where they partnered with the Wuhan lab.
In April 2020, the National Institutes of Health, a US government agency, withdrew funding to the organisation. It was later reinstated.
In 2022, the National Institutes of Health – a US government agency – terminated EcoHealth Alliance’s grant for its bat coronavirus work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
It said “EcoHealth Alliance had not been able to hand over lab notebooks and other records from its Wuhan partner that relate to controversial experiments involving modified bat viruses, despite multiple requests”.
EcoHealth Alliance’s funding comes mostly from US federal agencies – including the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and US Agency for International Development.
The FBI and the US Department of Energy believe Covid most likely leaked from a lab in China.
Dozens of experts, including the World Health Organisation, have also suggested Covid could have escaped from the Wuhan lab – and linked the outbreak to the project by EcoHealth Alliance.
Experts claim the Wuhan Institute of Virology endangered the world by carrying out so-called “gain of function” experiments to engineer chimeric viruses.
This “souping up” involves extracting viruses from animals to engineer in a lab to make them more transmissible and deadly to humans.
According to the US Government Accountability Office, EcoHealth Alliance used government funds for genetic experiments at the Wuhan lab where they combined bat coronaviruses with SARS and MERS viruses, resulting in chimeric coronavirus strains.
EcoHealth Alliance has denied any wrongdoing over its experiments – and categorically denied any link to the origins of Covid.
The organisation said it was “disappointed” by the government’s decision to suspend funding and “will be contesting the proposed debarment”.
It added: “We disagree strongly with the decision and will present evidence to refute each of these allegations and to show that NIH’s continued support of EcoHealth Alliance is in the public interest.”
As we enter the fifth year of the pandemic, the world still has no definitive answers on where the virus came from.
Many scientists and intelligence officials suspect bungling researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology – which was partly funded by US government agencies – accidentally spread Covid during experiments on bat coronaviruses.
Meanwhile, the natural origins theory contends that Covid jumped from bats into humans through an “intermediate host”.
But an animal host has not been found after four years of searching.
China has refused to cooperate with a full-scale probe into the origins and experts claim a “cover up” is continuing today.