Republican lawmakers demand government stop funding group connected to Chinese COVID research

Republican members of Congress are demanding the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health to stop awarding grants to EcoHealth Alliance, the nonprofit foundation connected to COVID-19 research in Wuhan, China.

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) on Wednesday announced he and Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) led letters to the taxpayer-funded science groups, saying that they are choosing "risk over responsibility by funding" EcoHealth.

GOP lawmakers have demanded on several occasions for the federal government to cease funding to EcoHealth, which has been accused of multiple grant violations.

Forty members of Congress signed onto the letter to the National Science Foundation, which "recently awarded a $1 million grant for a project that will include EcoHealth Alliance for Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention," Marshall said.

Thirty members of Congress signed onto a letter to the National Institutes of Health, which previously awarded a five-year grant to EcoHealth to study bat coronaviruses.

"Let’s defund EcoHealth and launch a real scientific investigation to find out once and for all what was really happening in Wuhan, China so the same mistakes are never repeated again," Ernst said.