Federal government gives controversial Wuhan-linked org $1 million to 'prevent future pandemics'

The federal government has awarded a controversial nonprofit a $1 million grant for research to help prevent future viral pandemics, an award that comes after more than two years of suspicions that the nonprofit in question may have been bankrolling certain types of highly dangerous coronavirus experiments in the city where the COVID-19 pandemic began. 

EcoHealth Alliance "was awarded a $1 million Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention Phase I (PIPP) grant by the National Science Foundation," EcoHealth said in a press release announcing the grant.

"The team of scientists will strategize methods of early infectious disease detection and intervention," the nonprofit added. 

EcoHealth has been in the spotlight of pandemic investigations for roughly two years due to its role in funneling considerable federal grant money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology that was used to conduct experiments in coronavirus virility and pandemic potential. 

Speculations and conspiracy theories have swirled that the EcoHealth-funneled grant money may have bankrolled dangerous "gain of function" research that created deadlier and/or more transmissible strains of coronaviruses.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology sits just a few miles from where the Chinese Communist Party government claims the first major COVID outbreak was detected. 

In its announcement of the grant, EcoHealth indicated that the grant money will not go to outright viral experiments of any kind. 

The funding, rather, would be spent, in part, "compiling a list of mutagenic RNA viruses with a high risk of spillover based on their ability to spread, cause outbreak, and cause severe illness," as well as "identifying locations at risk of spillover and localized spread by assembling a list of animals known to host one or more of the focal viruses."