Covid Research Fund will be cut, it shows NIH documents
COVID, climate change and studies on South Africa are on the latest list of grants terminated by US National Health Institutes. Nature
Coloring scanning electron microphrop of an apoptotic cell (greenish brown) Intensely infected with SARS-COV-2 virus particles (pink) isolated from a patient sample.
National Institute of National Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH/FLICICR
The US National Health Institutes (NIH) and Disease Control and Prevention Centers (CDC) began to cancel billions of dollars for research on COVID-19.
The COVID-19 Research Fund was issued for a limited purpose: it chopped the effects of pandema ”, according to an internal nıh document Nature This provides an updated guidance to the agency staff on how to dissolve these grants. “Since my pande is finished, grant funds are no longer necessary,” the document says. It is not clear how many of these grants will end.
The printing sounds like NIH under US President Donald Trump stopped approximately 400 grants last month. An earlier version of the documents, obtained by Nature On March 5He directed personnel to identify and potentially cancel projects in transsexual populations; Gender identity; Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) In scientific labor; and environmental justice.
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NIH, the world’s largest public service Biomedical ResearchThe title gave a grant to the project, which includes approximately 600 projects, including ‘Covid’ worth of US $ 850 million. Together, these projects constitute approximately 2% of NIH’s budget of $ 47 billion. And CDC plans to cancel $ 11.4 billion funds for the pandemic response, NBC News Reports.
SARS COV-2, virus This causes Covid-19, in the United States, more than 1.2 million in the United States, including more than 7 million people, including more than 7 million people, and continues to infect and kill people. Scientists are very important to examine the virus, to prevent the next time the infection and the government’s reaction to the outbreak.
The termination in NIH includes a program of $ 577 million to identify and improve antiviral drugs against SARS-COV-2 coronavirus and six virus types with pandemic potential.
“These terminals are clearly narrow-minded-we need new treatments against viruses, Austin says Austin, a structural virologist at the University of Texas, Jason McLellan, a wide-spectrum treatment project against various virus species and ended on March 24th. “A small part of SARK-COV-2 to cancel the entire grant will be dangerous for future pandemic preparation.”
Nih did not answer NatureQuestion about grant termination or the concerns of scientists about them. Main establishment of USA Ministry of Health and Human Services (HHS), Nature “Covid-19 pandem is over and HHS will no longer spend billions of taxpayers who respond to a pandemia that does not exist years ago, where Americans continued years ago.”
Updated Guidance
Updated Documents Nature NIH personnel who were sent to ‘Grant Management Experts’ obtained on March 25 (see the additional information below). This document includes Covid-19 in the list of “NIH’s research activities that NIH no longer supports” list, as well as research on “transsexual problems” and vaccination hesitations. The latest guide also, South Africa And climate change should be terminated.
The document also summarizes a new research category that needs to be terminated: Any project in a list sent by NIH Director or HHS is currently for a long time anti -vaccine lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Such large -scale grant terminations were not seen; In response to serious concerns about the research abuse or fraud, the agency cancels only a few dozen projects each year every year and performs only as a last resort after taking other actions such as suspending it.
Grant management experts will be assigned to define and terminate projects, because the current leadership of NIH is very prejudiced to make these findings.
However, some scientists are afraid that guidance for NIH employees is very uncertain and may be in the chopping block without considering the merit of any research project associated with certain keywords. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, examining SARS-COV-2, says, “They are not a surgical laser, they take a saw for grants, not a surgical laser.”
Long covid
Within the scope of the new directive, it is unclear whether NIH has planned to close long -term research, including the main causes and treatments for the disease, including the rescue attempt of $ 1.6 billion. The Trump administration seems to earthlyizing long Covid: this week, HHS, according to e-mail correspondence, will close the long Covid research and application office that coordinates the reaction of the US government to the disease. Nature He got it.
This is a real slap in the face of many patients struggling with long -term health effects of Covid infections, Jennifer Nuzzo, the epidemiologist and director of the pandemic center at the University of Brown in Rhode Island.
Kennedy, in part in part to overhaul US health institutions to focus on chronic diseases, promised to “make America healthy again”. Nuzzo is not in the spirit of this “wholesale pressure” campaign in Covid research. Iz We should examine how infections cause some of the worst diseases on which society is based, ”he says, the infection, Epstein -Barr, connected to the development of a common herpesvirus and multiple sclerosis.
Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale Medical Faculty in New Haven, examining the immune reactions in people with long Covid and other viral conditions, says: “If we don’t solve this with this pandemic now, I’m afraid we will be much less prepared for future pandemics.”
This article has been reproduced with permission and First published On March 26, 2025.
