EcoHealth Alliance was the US contractor funneling US money to the Wuhan lab. The NIH terminated that contract for not turning over documents relating to a possible lab leak, but just gave them another.

NIH AWARDS NEW GRANT TO U.S. ORGANIZATION AT CENTER OF COVID-19 LAB LEAK CONTROVERSY

THE MAIN U.S.-BASED scientific organization at the center of the controversy over the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic has won a new grant from the National Institutes of Health for risky bat coronavirus surveillance research, despite losing a previous award for failing to provide records essential to an investigation into that origin.


The grant was awarded September 21 to EcoHealth Alliance, helmed by Peter Daszak, and is titled “Analyzing the potential for future bat coronavirus emergence in Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam.” The new grant comes despite an open congressional investigation into the organization, which has two other ongoing NIH grants and a third in negotiation.


In August, the NIH terminated a sub-award to the Wuhan Institute of Virology that had been part of an earlier grant to EcoHealth Alliance, telling the House Oversight Committee that the organization had refused to turn over laboratory notebooks and other records as required. “NIH has requested on two occasions that EHA provide NIH the laboratory notebooks and original electronic files from the research conducted at WIV. To date, WIV has not provided these records,” the NIH wrote to the committee. “Today, NIH has informed EHA that since WIV is unable to fulfill its duties for the subaward under grant R01AI110964, the WIV subaward is terminated for failure to meet award terms and conditions requiring provision of records to NIH upon request.”


On August 19, the NIH wrote to EcoHealth to let it know that the sub-award had been terminated for “material non-compliance with terms and conditions of award.” The agency added that EcoHealth could potentially renegotiate the grant without the involvement of the Wuhan lab.