According to the grant award, the main thrust of the research is to “understand what factors allow bat-origin coronaviruses, including close relatives to Sars, to jump into humans” by studying their evolutionary diversity, patterns of spillover and genetic diversity. 

The work “will produce reagents and genetic sequences that can be used to test vaccines and therapeutics to fight future pandemics, and hotspot maps that can be used to target surveillance and control measures”, it says. 

Dr Daszak said the work was unlikely to show how the pandemic started, although stored human blood human samples held by EcoHealth may provide “clues”.

“We are not going to do any recombinant virus work. We’re not going to subcontract to Wuhan or any other organisation in China but we are going to use the results from our previous work that no one’s had access to,” he said.

He added: “Some of the human samples might give us clues about Covid origins. We do have a lot of human serum samples in the freezers around Southeast Asia, and it may be that some of those show high levels of spillover of SARS-like coronaviruses. But the primary goal is to understand why coronaviruses [present] a high risk of spillover, not to hunt down the origin of Covid.”

Crucial in bat virus surveillance

Ecohealth was first funded by the NIA in 2014 and produced ground breaking research in its first five years. The group was the first to identify bats as the wildlife reservoir of SARS-CoV and repeatedly warned ahead of the pandemic that a spillover to humans was probable.

Its grant was renewed for a further five years in 2019 only to be stopped a year later amid fierce anti-China rhetoric from the Trump administration in the early days of the pandemic. The termination came just a week after President Donald Trump, when asked about the project at a press conference, said: “We will end that grant very quickly.”

A review of the grant published last year by the US Office of the Inspector General found infringements in the administration of the contract but concluded its early termination had been “improper”. Supporters included more than 80 former Nobel Laureates who signed a letter to the NIH calling for the funding to be resumed.

“We believe that this action sets a dangerous precedent by interfering in the conduct of science,” they wrote. “Now is precisely the time when we need to support this kind of research if we aim to control the pandemic and prevent subsequent ones.”

Nobel Laureate Sir Richard Roberts, who organised the letter, welcomed news of the new NIH funding and blamed political pressure and weak leadership for it being stopped in the first place.

“Unfortunately, NIH is subjected to political pressure from time to time, but mainly when they have a weak Director, who is afraid to stand up to the politicians,” he told The Telegraph.

“If Francis Collins [then NIH Director] had any balls he would have resigned before allowing the EcoHealth Alliance grant to be cut.”

Sir Richard added: “EcoHealth Alliance has been a very important component of our surveillance of bat viruses … Their programs are an important part of the world’s scientific efforts to identify potential pathogens and whenever possible to nip them in the bud.”