Trump Cuts $82 Million CREID Network, Blunting Response to 1,000-Case DRC Ebola Outbreak
Updated
Updated · WIRED · May 28
Trump Cuts $82 Million CREID Network, Blunting Response to 1,000-Case DRC Ebola Outbreak
7 articles · Updated · WIRED · May 28
At least 1,000 suspected Ebola cases and 238 suspected deaths in eastern DRC have unfolded without on-the-ground help from the NIH-backed CREID network, whose researchers say they would normally deploy testing, sequencing and surveillance support.
An NIH stop-work order last June halted the 10-site network before its 2025 renewal, after the Trump administration deemed the research unsafe and a poor use of taxpayer money; scientists say the cuts were tied partly to Covid lab-leak politics.
That gap has mattered because the outbreak is driven by Bundibugyo virus, while early field tests were geared to the more common Zaire strain, leaving diagnostics and reagents in short supply.
CREID teams previously helped contain Uganda's 2022 Ebola outbreak in four months through rapid detection and contact tracing; that outbreak infected 164 people and killed 55.
The current outbreak has already spread into Uganda with seven confirmed cases and one death, and WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the epidemic is now outpacing response efforts.
With a vital pandemic defense network dismantled, how will the world now fight the next deadly virus?
Did cutting a global virus-hunting network to protect taxpayers actually create a more expensive and dangerous world?