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A group of House Republicans is requesting additional answers after the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) awarded a nearly $5 million grant to EcoHealth Alliance, which has attracted scrutiny for its coronavirus research in Wuhan.
“USAID’s decision to award EcoHealth Alliance additional federal funding is misguided and deeply concerning,” Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Pa., said in a statement to Fox News. He and 25 other Republicans sent a letter on Monday to USAID Administrator Samantha Power, requesting additional information about the five-year award granted in October.
“EcoHealth used money from their last federal grant to fund dangerous, gain-of-function coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology before the pandemic,” Reschenthaler added.
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“Under the leadership of Dr. Peter Daszak, EcoHealth has failed to comply with federal reporting requirements, given the U.S. government the runaround, and attempted to impede research into the lab leak theory. That’s why I introduced a bill to defund EcoHealth.”
“They’ve proven they can’t be trusted to put the American people ahead of the demands of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party]. Additionally, my colleagues and I want to know if USAID was aware of EcoHealth’s involvement with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the organization’s track record of deception when they awarded them the grant, and if they will continue to funnel taxpayer dollars to controversial research or CCP labs.”
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Peter Daszak and Thea Fischer, members of the World Health Organization team tasked with investigating the origins of COVID-19, sit in a car arriving at Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, Feb. 3, 2021. (REUTERS/Thomas Peter)
The letter details a litany of concerns surrounding the company and asks whether USAID considered those before awarding $4.7 million in taxpayer money.
It also asks whether the company will subcontract with any foreign labs or will be prohibited from using federal funding to support research in China.
EcoHealth Alliance and USAID did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment. According to The New York Times, an EcoHealth Alliance spokesperson has cast doubt on their research influencing COVID-19, saying that coronaviruses they studied weren’t genetically similar enough.
The National Institutes of Health previously accused the company of failing to properly report findings regarding bat coronaviruses growing in mice. EcoHealth Alliance’s previous spokesman, Robert Kessler, also said the organization submitted its findings to NIH “as soon as we were made aware.”
(Photo Illustration by Igor Golovniov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Monday’s letter is just the latest to ratchet up scrutiny of the U.S. government’s involvement in Wuhan. Last week, a group of House Republicans sent a letter accusing the Health and Human Services Department of obstructing congressional investigators’ attempts to probe the origins of COVID-19.
USAID previously told Reschenthaler that its “PREDICT” program provided EcoHealth Alliance with $1.1 million between October 2009 and May 2019. The money was part of a “sub-agreement with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) for the purpose of advancing research on critical viruses that could pose harm to human and animal health.”
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“USAID-funded activities carried out by the WIV were consistent with the work performed in other countries that also received related funding. These activities involved testing for viral families (by polymerase chain reaction (PCR)) in samples collected from wild animals and humans, as well as the development of serologic assays to test for exposure (i.e., antibodies) to coronaviruses in animals and people. These activities were done to identify and understand zoonotic viruses among animal populations before they spillover (i.e., are able to infect humans) and cause potential pandemics in people. USAID never authorized or funded any work that aimed to increase the ability of infectious agents to cause disease by enhancing its pathogenicity or by increasing its transmissibility (research known as ‘Gain of Function’ studies) at WIV. In addition, USAID never received a letter from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to the EcoHealth Alliance requesting a voluntary pause.”
It added that its “work in China through the PREDICT project ended in 2019, due to the previous administration’s decision to stop all USAID activities in China. Since then, no additional USAID Global Health Security funding has been provided to the WIV.”
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/house-republicans-usaid-grant-echohealth