Four families of COVID-19 fatalities are suing EcoHealth Alliance in court. Even before COVID-19 began in Wuhan, China, this New York-based organization was researching how bat coronaviruses alter to become more harmful there.

According to a complaint filed on August 2 in Manhattan’s New York Supreme Court, EcoHealth and its founder, Peter Daszak, were aware that the infection may spread globally.

The lawsuit asserts that EcoHealth attempted to conceal the origin of the outbreak in addition to creating a “changed virus.”

“If we had known the source or origin of this virus and had not been misled that it was from a pangolin in a wet market, and rather we knew that it was a genetically manipulated virus, and that the scientists involved were concealing that from our clients, the outcome could have been very different,” victims’ attorney Patricia Finn told the New York Post.

The families of Mary Conroy, of Pennsylvania; Emma D. Holley, of Rochester, NY; Larry Carr, of Crossville, Tennessee; and Raul Osuna, of Bennington, Nebraska, are seeking unspecified damages.

“[The families of the deceased] are definitely in mourning, but moreover they’re enraged because the truth of what really happened appears to be coming forward,” Finn added.

Paul Rinker, of Pennsylvania, is also suing Midtown-based EcoHealth and Daszak over the “serious injuries” he suffered from his bout with the bug.

Additionally, Finn is suing EcoHealth and Daszak in the counties of Nassau and Rockland. Finn is a representative for the families of two survivors and two other people who died from the illness.

“This particular case is highly offensive because it appears they knew and concealed the origin of the virus,” said Finn, adding, “The treatment or approach taken in dealing with the virus could have been radically different than it was.”

In May, the NIH once more awarded EcoHealth a grant for more than $576,000. They were interested in finding out how harmful viruses like SARS, MERS, and COVID-19 transmitted from animals to humans. They received this funding despite breaking the NIH guidelines.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, first awarded the funding in 2014 under the title “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.” EcoHealth Alliance received $3.8 million over a five-year period as a result of the funding. By altering their genetic makeup in laboratories, they hoped to determine how bat viruses could transmit to humans.

The grant was terminated in May 2016 because Erik Stemmy, an NIAID employee, believed the funds may have been utilized for experiments that were prohibited at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China. The Obama administration had already put a stop to these tests at that point. However, the halt was lifted in July 2016 for an unknown cause. Peter Daszak, the founder of EcoHealth, thanked NIAID for allowing them to continue at that point.

EcoHealth was required to submit reports regarding its activities as part of the grant’s guidelines. However, they haven’t supplied these reports since 2018. Technology issues, according to them, prevented them. Because they date from before COVID-19 officially began in Wuhan, the missing reports were extremely significant.

The Obama government halted funding research in 2014 that increased the risk of bat COVID spreading to humans. The NIH transferred this investigation from EcoHealth to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), where Peter Daszak was in charge, a few months prior to this choice.

It is interesting that the WIV “had openly participated in gain-of-function research in partnership with U.S. universities and institutions” for years under the leadership of Dr. Shi ‘Batwoman’ Zhengli.

However, once Daszak changed Bat COVID and Sars-CoV-2 appeared there, Daszak published an article in The Lancet with the support of other scientists in which he claimed that the virus must have spontaneously entered animals, possibly from a wet market. They asserted that they vehemently reject the notion that COVID-19 originated from a source other than animals. Later, The Lancet reported that Daszak had interests that might have influenced his opinions.

On the other hand, COVID-19 likely originated from a lab as part of research, not from animals, according to a report by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions on October 27, 2022. This report was written by a team of individuals representing various political ideologies who investigated the origins of COVID-19.

A “bipartisan Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee oversight effort into the origins of SARS-CoV-2” led to the creation of the study. It offers a thorough examination that looks at “information that is freely available and open-source to examine the two leading hypotheses regarding the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.”

Although the NIH’s requirements for reinstatement have not been satisfied, the EcoHealth Alliance’s grant has been renewed.