Jeremy Farrar — chief scientific officer of the World Health Organization (WHO) and a central figure in efforts to suppress speculation about a possible lab origin of COVID-19 — collaborated on a viral discovery project in Southeast Asia involving Peter Daszak, a scientist at the center of that speculation, according to grant documents.
A 2010 National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant proposal describes Farrar as the “primary collaborator” in Vietnam of a controversial organization that has come under scrutiny for its work on novel coronaviruses with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The organization was then called the Wildlife Trust, but would soon be renamed EcoHealth Alliance.
At the time of the 2010 grant proposal, Daszak was the president of the Wildlife Trust, while Farrar helmed the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where he had worked as a clinician since 1996.
The Oxford team was slated to ship its samples to a lab at Columbia University, not to Wuhan.
Still, the apparent connection between Farrar and Daszak — who faces possible debarment from U.S. tax dollars — could present a previously unknown conflict of interest on the pandemic origins question at the highest levels of the WHO.
Both Daszak and EcoHealth are under debarment proceedings by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for inadequate oversight of high-risk coronavirus research in Wuhan.
The revelation comes at a time of uncertainty about the future of the U.S. relationship with the WHO. The Financial Times reported that the incoming Trump administration could announce a withdrawal from the organization as early as day one. Farrar became the chief scientist at the WHO in May 2023.
A second WHO investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic — launched after Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said publicly that the first investigation’s findings, including that a lab origin was “extremely unlikely,” had been inadequate — has been delayed for years.
Reached for comment, WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic did not respond to questions about the apparent Farrar-Daszak partnership.
On the future of the U.S. relationship with the WHO, Jasarevic pointed to comments Tedros made in early December 2024 stating that “I think it would be good to give them some space for the transition and I hope, I believe they will do the right thing.”
On the second phase investigation, Jasarevic said that the group of global scientists charged with the report, the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens, “is currently working on an independent assessment of the origins of SARS-CoV-2 … We don’t know when it will be completed.”
Farrar and Daszak did not respond to emailed questions.
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