NIH gives new grant to EcoHealth Alliance to research bat coronaviruses, despite concerns over Wuhan lab link

The National Institutes of Health awarded a new grant to EcoHealth Alliance to study bat coronaviruses, despite past scrutiny over its ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

"Most pandemics are caused by animal-origin viruses that emerge in regions where people have high contact with wildlife and where illnesses or outbreaks may be missed," a public health relevance statement on the project's NIH website says. "This project builds on two decades of work that identifies the border region of Southern China, Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam as a high risk for future emergence of novel coronaviruses and the potential site where SARS-CoV-2 first ‘spilled over’ from bats to people."

The statement says that the project "will conduct in-depth surveys and serological testing in communities with high exposure to wildlife, identify wildlife reservoirs of the coronaviruses they are exposed to, and use clinic-based surveillance to assess cases and clusters of associated illnesses, as well as testing public health strategies to disrupt spillover and spread."