National Institutes of Health ends subaward to Wuhan lab but continues EcoHealth grants

The U.S. National Institutes of Health is no longer providing funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has been connected to the COVID-19 outbreak, but it is still awarding taxpayer-funded grants to EcoHealth Alliance, the nonprofit that originally gave money to the Wuhan lab to study bat coronaviruses.

The National Institutes of Health, which is under the Department of Health and Human Services, on Friday said it told EcoHealth Alliance that it will be unable to continue to award money to the Wuhan lab "for failure to meet the award terms and conditions requiring provision of records to NIH upon request." 

EcoHealth has been under scrutiny since the start of the COVID pandemic, and in January the U.S. government found that EcoHealth was non-compliant with federal guidelines.

House Committee on Oversight and Reform Ranking Member James Comer (R-Ky.) on Friday slammed the National Institutes of Health for not doing more.

"Terminating EcoHealth Alliance’s partnership with the Wuhan Lab is the bare minimum. It’s unacceptable that the NIH continues to allow EcoHealth Alliance to receive taxpayer dollars even though it is confirmed EcoHealth violated the terms of its grant contract," Comer said. 

The experiments funded by EcoHealth in Wuhan may have led to the COVID-19 pandemic, the congressman speculated.

He promised accountability after Republicans retake the House in midterms this fall.