Statement on Recent Press Coverage of Lawsuit Involving EcoHealth Alliance

August 16, 2023 – We cannot comment on pending litigation. However, in their reporting, several media outlets covering this story have uncritically repeated factual inaccuracies regarding EcoHealth Alliance.

It is important to note that the bat coronavirus research conducted by EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology could not have started the COVID-19 pandemic. As then NIH Director Francis Collins said in a public statement on October 20, 2021: “NIH wants to set the record straight on NIH-supported research to understand naturally occurring bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, funded through a subaward from NIH grantee EcoHealth Alliance. 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.” (Italics added, https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/who-we-are/nih-director/statements/statement-misinformation-
about-sars-cov-2-origins).

Press contact: communications@ecohealthalliance.org