COVID Research Funding to Be Slashed, NIH Documents Show
Studies on COVID, climate change and South Africa are on the latest list of terminated grants by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, according to updated documents obtained by Nature
Colorized scanning electron micrograph of an apoptotic cell (greenish brown) heavily infected with SARS-COV-2 virus particles (pink), isolated from a patient sample.
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH/Flickr
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have begun cancelling billions of dollars in funding for research related to COVID-19.
COVID-19 research funds “were issued for a limited purpose: to ameliorate the effects of the pandemic,” according to an internal NIH document that Nature has obtained and that provides the agency’s staff members with updated guidance on how to terminate these grants. “Now that the pandemic is over, the grant funds are no longer necessary,” the document states. It is not clear how many of these grants will be ended.
The crackdown comes as the NIH, under US President Donald Trump, has halted nearly 400 grants in the past month. An earlier version of the documents, obtained by Nature on 5 March, directed staff to identify and potentially cancel projects on transgender populations; gender identity; diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the scientific workforce; and environmental justice.
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The NIH, which is the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research, has awarded grants to nearly 600 ongoing projects that include ‘COVID’ in the title, worth nearly US$850 million. Together, these projects make up…
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