Exclusive | EcoHealth Alliance had pending $4M grants to study Marburg, other viruses before federal suspension

A controversial Manhattan nonprofit — which was suspended in May from receiving any more federal funds after funneling more than half a million in taxpayer dollars to the now-infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology before the COVID-19 pandemic — was asking for millions more in July to study dangerous viruses, The Post can exclusively reveal.EcoHealth Alliance had “pending” grants for potentially risky viral research from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) that totaled nearly $4 million and were slated to start in July 2024, according to records obtained by the taxpayer watchdog group White Coat Waste and shared with The Post.Those projects included a $3,450,622.08 grant for research to “[d]etermine the frequency of exposure to filoviruses and henipaviruses among people in rural Liberia, identify bat reservoirs for those viruses, and characterize risk factors for human exposure” until June 2029.Another $360,916.37 grant was to “[c]onduct a serosurvey of humans and domestic animals in a rural community in Ghana where an outbreak of Marburg virus originated to determine the extent of filovirus exposure and associated risk factors” until June 2026.Both grants listed the place of performance as the nonprofit’s New York City location, but neither was funded, according to a review of federal grant databases, before the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) suspended EcoHealth Alliance in May and proposed it for a three-year debarment.“All federal funding to EcoHealth Alliance has been halted,” a spokesperson told The Post.“EcoHealth Alliance is not conducting research on Marburg virus and does not conduct laboratory research in New York City.”Justin Goodman, a senior vice president at White Coat Waste, told The Post it got the records after filing a Colorado Public Records Act request pursuant to another multimillion-dollar grant to import bats to a state university and conduct experiments with SARS-CoV-2 and t...