EcoHealth’s COVID bat-testing lab upended by feds’ spending ban

When the federal government shut down taxpayer money going to EcoHealth Alliance, the company linked to the Wuhan virus lab, it may also doomed the firm’s plans to start a bat research lab in the U.S.

EcoHealth had been working with Colorado State University on a lab in Fort Collins, north of Denver, winning millions of dollars in federal grant money to create a bat colony to study zoonotic diseases. EcoHealth had been tasked with procuring the bats that would be used in the research.

The Health and Human Services Department threw a wrench in those plans after it announced the firm had misbehaved so badly that it can no longer receive government money. HHS immediately suspended EcoHealth from getting funding and said it’s pursuing debarment, which would be a more persistent ban.