How vaccine and Covid backlash is impacting ebola response

In 2020, the National Institutes of Health funded a network of 10 centers intended to “expand knowledge on re-emerging and emerging infectious diseases.” But when dangerous Ebola and hantaviruses spilled over and caused outbreaks in recent months, those research centers have not been in a position to provide aid. In 2025, the centers’ grants were terminated by the Trump administration as part of cuts that targeted work related to Covid-19 and pandemic preparedness.

The network “has been deemed unsafe for Americans and not a good use of taxpayer funding,” the agency told its grantees in May 2025. Of the $82 million allocated to the program over the course of five years, $14.9 million remained unspent, according to data collected by Grant Witness. 

While the centers weren’t on the frontlines of outbreak responses like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or USAID, some researchers involved in the network said the NIH cuts have weakened relationships with experts in other countries that they spent years fostering, with the hopes that it would streamline outbreak responses and the creation of diagnostics and treatments.