Supports· moderateCOV-E017
The funder's position: the supported viruses are too distant to be the source
- what the source states
- "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." The same statement concedes: "To date, the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic has not been identified, despite intensive efforts to do so."
- what we infer
- Recorded with its interest declared: this is the funding agency's statement about research it funded. The underlying genetic-distance point does not depend on the agency's credibility — it follows from the published sequences — which is why the claim it supports is graded on the sequence data rather than on this statement.
- limitations
- An interested party's statement about its own conduct.
- This case's research brief carried a staging-host URL for this statement; the canonical location is used here instead.