NIH awards grant to EcoHealth Alliance after political uproar

The NIH just awarded EcoHealth Alliance a grant to study the emergence of new viruses in nature, months after an earlier award to the group was abruptly cancelled. EcoHealth had a partnership with a virology lab in Wuhan, China, but the NIH cancelled that five-year grant in April after suggesting that EcoHealth's work no longer fit with the government agency's priorities, a decision that was soundly criticized, and now reads as ironic because EcoHealth was being considered for the very grant it has now won. This grant is part of a broader NIAID effort to establish a network of 11 new Centers for Research on Emerging Infectious Diseases — most of which are in the U.S. These centers will support projects in the U.S. and 28 other countries on emerging pathogens in wildlife and their spillover into humans, with each center focusing on particular areas of the world. Central and South America projects will focus on arboviruses — the family that Zika belongs to — while Asia and Southeast Asia projects will also look at coronaviruses.