Research funding to reduce integration funding has been shown according to the NIH document
Research on Covid, climate change and South Africa is on the latest list of cancellation grants from the US National Institutes of Health. Nature
Coloring scan electron micrographs of apoptotic cells (Greenish brown) Heavily infected with SARS-COV-2 virus particles (pink), isolated from the patient sample.
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH/FLICKR
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have begun canceling billions of dollars in funding for research related to Covid-19.
Covid-19 research funding “issued for limited purposes: improving the effectiveness of the pandemic,” according to the internal NIH document Nature Now that you have obtained it, we will provide agency staff with the latest guidance on how to terminate these grants. “With the pandemic over, we no longer need grants,” the document says. It is not clear how many of these grants will end.
The crackdown has been brought about as nearly 400 grants have been suspended in the past month under US President Donald Trump. Previous versions of the documentation, Get with Nature March 5thstaff members who were instructed to identify and potentially cancel projects related to transgender populations. Gender identity; Diversity, Equality, Inclusion (DEI) Science worker. and environmental justice.
Supporting science journalism
If you enjoy this article, consider supporting award-winning journalism. Subscribe. Purchase a subscription helps ensure a future of impactful stories about discoveries and ideas that will shape our world today.
NIH, the world’s largest public funder Biomedical Researchawarded grants to nearly 600 ongoing projects, including “Covid” in the title. Together, these projects account for almost 2% of NIH’s $47 billion budget. The CDC is planning to cancel $11.4 billion in funding to respond to the pandemic. NBC News Report.
SARS-CoV-2, virus That has caused Covid-19, killing more than 7 million people worldwide, including over 1.2 million people in the US, and keeping infecting and killing people. According to scientists, the research into the virus, the mode of infection, and the government’s response to the pandemic are important to prevent:
Among the NIH’s termination is a $577 million program to identify and develop antiviral drugs against the SARS-Cov-2 coronavirus, as well as a program to develop six other viruses with potential for a pandemic.
“These ends are clearly myopic. We are desperately needed new treatments for the virus,” says Jason McClellan, a structural virologist at the University of Texas Austin University, who is part of the program, which will develop a wide range of treatments that work for several types of viruses, which ended on March 24th. “With SARS-COV-2 involved, cancelling the entire grant would be a risky thing to do with preparations for the future pandemic.”
NIH did not respond NatureQuestions about grant termination or scientist concerns are concerns about them. Its parent organization, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Nature “The Covid-19 pandemic is over. HHS will not waste billions of taxpayer dollars in response to a nonexistent pandemic that Americans have been moving for years.”
Updated guidance
Updated Documents Nature The obtained (see supplementary information below) was sent to the Grant Management Specialist on March 25th. The document includes COVID-19 in the list of “Research activities not supported by the NIH” in addition to research on China, DEI, “transgender issues” and vaccine reluctance. The latest guidance states that grants are relevant South Africa Climate change needs to end.
This document also outlines new categories of research to close. The projects on the list submitted by the NIH Director or HHS are currently directed by long-time anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The termination of such a large grant is unprecedented. Agents usually only cancel dozens of projects each year in response to serious concerns about research misconduct and fraud. Also, after taking other actions such as stopping, it is only used as a last resort.
Grants-Management Specialists are tasked with identifying and terminating the project as they believe the current leadership of the NIH is too biased for members of the science staff to make these decisions.
However, some scientists fear that NIH employees’ guidance is too vague and that research projects related to specific keywords may be in the chopping block without considering their merits. “They have taken chainsaws for grants, not surgical lasers,” says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada.
Long Covid
Under the new directive, it is unclear whether the NIH will shut down long-term covid research, including a $1.6 billion recovery initiative aimed at finding the root causes and treatment of the disease. The Trump administration appears to be stripping the long-term Covid. This week, HHS will close long community research and practice positions that coordinate the US government’s response to illness, according to email communications. Nature I’ve got it.
This said Jennifer Nuzzo, epidemiologist and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
Kennedy has vowed to “make America healthy again” by overhauling US health agencies to concentrate on chronic illnesses. This “wholesale crackdown” from Covid Research is not the spirit of the campaign, says Nuzzo. “We should study how infections cause some of the worst diseases society can endure,” she said, adding that the study is linked to the development of multiple sclerosis, a common herpes virus called Epstein-Barr.
Ikekojima, an immunologist at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, studies the immune responses of people with long covid and other post-virus conditions.
This article was reproduced with permission and was First published March 26, 2025.
