Fact-checkers from FactCheck.org and The Washington Post say that a letter from the National Institutes of Health regarding research on coronaviruses has been taken out of context. According to the fact-checkers, the letter says that research by EcoHealth Alliance is not linked to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the bat coronaviruses under examination in the research organisation’s experiments are not closely genetically related to the current pandemic’s novel coronavirus. The NIH also confirmed that EcoHealth Alliance experiments conducted in Wuhan Institute of Virology in China have no link to the COVID-19 pandemic and did not produce SARS-CoV-2, according to FactCheck.org.
What you need to know:
– Researchers at the US-based EcoHealth Alliance, a scientific nonprofit devoted to pandemic prevention, spent years studying various forms of coronaviruses prior to 2020, according to The Washington Post – The Alliance was awarded a grant in 2014 and again in 2019 to research the potential for spillover between bat coronaviruses and human contagion, according to FactCheck.org
– National Institutes of Health Principal Deputy Director Lawrence A. Tabak sent a letter in October alleging that EcoHealth Alliance had violated grant terms by not disclosing that mice in the experiment became sicker when exposed to bat coronavirus, according to The Washington Post – The NIH responded to false claims about the letter to confirm that the viruses involved in the earlier experiment had nothing to do with the present-day COVID-19 coronavirus, FactCheck.org reports
“Analysis of published genomic data and other documents from the grantee demonstrate that the naturally occurring bat coronaviruses studied under the NIH grant are genetically far distant from SARS-CoV-2 and could not possibly have caused the COVID-19 pandemic. Any claims to the contrary are demonstrably false.” — NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins retrieved via FactCheck.Org
NIH demanded EcoHealth share any unpublished data from an experiment conducted in Wuhan, which they say wasn’t promptly reported as required. EcoHealth says this is a ‘misconception’. But, NIH director Francis S. Collins is also pushing back against people he believes are spreading misinformation about the experiment, which used mice modified with human ACE2 receptors that allow viruses to infect cells. He says it could not possibly be linked to the emergence of COVID-19. — The Washington Post
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