‘Calamitous Collaboration’: Outrage Grows Over NIH’s Renewal of Grant Giving Millions to Wuhan Lab-Linked EcoHealth

Security personnel stand guard outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, on Feb. 3, 2021. Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images

Lawmakers have condemned the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) decision to reactivate a controversial federal grant to EcoHealth Alliance that was suspended three years ago over concerns about grant term violations.

EcoHealth, the nonprofit organization that for years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic used NIH funds to conduct coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China—the Chinese facility under scrutiny for its work on dangerous bat coronaviruses—announced in a May 8 statement the new four-year grant, which is to be used to study “the risk of bat coronavirus spillover emergence.”