The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the United States Agency for International Development funded an EcoHealth Alliance subcontractor’s efforts on coronaviruses, according to a report found through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Ben Hu, the subcontractor granted $41 million to work on coronaviruses, was one of the first infected with COVID-19 in November 2019.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Hu’s research focused on “modifying coronaviruses so they could bind to human cells. The stated purpose of the research was to identify viruses that could lead to a pandemic and facilitate the development of a vaccine.”
Reporting from The Blaze:
According to the grant form, an EcoHealth-administered grant of $3,586,760 from the NIAID was marked "pending" for a project titled "understanding the risk of bat coronavirus emergence" for work to be undertaken from June 2019 through May 2024. The same project had previously received $3,086,735 in American taxpayer money from NIAID between June 2014 and May 2019. The grant form further indicated that USAID had poured $38 million into an EcoHealth alliance project titled "PREDICT-2" between October 2014 and September 2019, again with Hu's name on it.
