NIH says EcoHealth Alliance committed several grant violations

EcoHealth Alliance, which gave grant money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, was non-compliant with eight parts of a written agreement with the U.S. government, according to the National Institutes of Health.

The NIH sent a letter to EcoHealth Alliance last week about the non-profit's lack of compliance with the government. The letter was made public by Republicans on the House Oversight Committee. 

EcoHealth's sub-award agreements lacked several required components such as having to follow federal statutes to receive funding. EcoHealth also did not provide "procedures for directing and monitoring the research effort," the report also found.

"EcoHealth has demonstrated a history of failure to comply with several elements of the terms and conditions of grant awards not only for these active awards, but also for the suspended award," NIH Deputy Director Dr. Michael Lauer writes to EcoHealth Alliance’s Drs. Aleksei Chmura and Peter Daszak.

Committee Republicans tweeted a picture of the letter with the caption "Oversight Republicans are getting results [Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.)] recently requested NIH provide its communications with EcoHealth & Peter Daszak. A letter dated January 6, 2022 now confirms EcoHealth hid the truth about their risky coronavirus experiments in Wuhan."

NIH grants to EcoHealth have come under scrutiny after the 2019 outbreak of COVID-19 was linked to a Wuhan lab funded by the agency.

The NIH has been accused of knowingly funding "gain-of-function" research for years in China by genetically manipulating coronaviruses in bats to better understand how such viruses work. Documents obtained by Judicial Watch show that millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars have been allocated for coronavirus research in China with EcoHealth alliance.

Biden administration officials have denied knowledge of such NIH-funded research in China.