Report: NIH gave EcoHealth Alliance millions of U.S. tax dollars to study Coronaviruses without adequate oversight

The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd reports, “The National Institutes of Health (NIH) did not give proper oversight to EcoHealth Alliance even after it awarded the organization millions of dollars to study bat coronaviruses, a new 72-page report from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General found.

More than a year and a half after the OIG announced an investigation into the NIH’s funding of the Wuhan lab suspected of playing a role in the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak, the inspector general officially announced that NIH and EcoHealth Alliance failed to comply with federal research and reporting standards. That included failing to adequately monitor what U.S. money was being used for and whether that research was safe and legal.

The report did not directly address whether EcoHealth Alliance engaged in illegal and dangerous gain-of-function research, as legislators and documents have alleged, but noted that NIH repeatedly neglected to refer questionable enhanced potential pandemic pathogens (ePPPs) research to the Department of Health and Human Services.

After EcoHealth Alliance failed to submit a mandatory report on its research progress the fall before the global Covid-19 outbreak, the NIH did not mention the report’s tardiness until nearly two years later in July 2021. That was a direct violation of HHS requirements, which state the NIH must follow up with grant recipients ‘no later than 30 days after the established due date…’

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who challenged the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ then-Director Anthony Fauci over the NIH’s funding of gain-of-function research, tweeted that the OIG’s report ‘confirms what we already knew.'

‘NIH failed to conduct adequate oversight of EcoHealth Alliance’s grant awards. The continued funding of EcoHealth Alliance despite its repeated noncompliance with federal regulations and policies further demonstrates the need to reform oversight of risky research paid for by the American taxpayers,’ Paul said."

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