Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Monday he supports suspending US grant funding to EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based virus research organization that has been tied to question and controversy around the origins of the virus that causes Covid-19.
The US Department of Health and Human Services in May suspended funding to EcoHealth Alliance and proposed the group be blocked from receiving federal funds in the future, possibly for years.
Asked on Monday if he supposed the suspension and debarment of EcoHealth Alliance, Fauci responded “yes.”
Before the pandemic, the US gave a $120,000 grant to EcoHealth Alliance with a subaward that funded work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In April 2020, the National Institutes of Health terminated the grant.
Fauci said that he later learned that the White House had called to tell the NIH to cancel the grant. Asked Monday if he agreed or disagreed with the decision at the time, he said that wasn’t his problem with the request.
“It wasn’t a question of agreeing or disagreeing. It was like, ‘Can we really do that? I don’t think that you can do that.’ And as it turned out I was right, because the general counsel of HHS said, ‘By the way, you can’t do that. You’ve got to restore the grant,’ ” Fauci testified.
The grant was reinstated, then suspended pending a compliance review.
Fauci said once he learned that there were compliance issues with the grant, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was told to stay out of it.
Since that time, NIH found numerous violations of grant policies by EcoHealth and has since blocked funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and suspended and proposed blocking NIH funding to EcoHealth as an institution and Dr. Peter Daszak individually.
In a May letter to EcoHealth Alliance and its president, Dr. Peter Daszak, HHS lists 30 pieces of evidence some dating back to 2013 to support its decision. HHS said in a memo that EcoHealth failed to “adequately monitor” virus growth experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, notify the NIH that viruses studied there “appeared to grow beyond permissible thresholds” laid out in a grant or provide requested information in a timely manner.
In a statement last month, a spokeperson for EcoHealth Alliance said the organization was “disappointed by HHS’ decision” and that it would contest the decision.