A federal watchdog has weighed in on problems with a U.S. government grant that funded work in Wuhan, China, on bat coronaviruses that some onlookers claim led to the COVID-19 pandemic. The audit found oversight issues by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and that the grantee had misreported $90,000 in expenses. But it sheds little new light on issues already widely covered and discussed in the media and Congress.

The report from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) finds “NIH did not effectively monitor or take timely action to address” compliance problems involving the EcoHealth Alliance, a New York City–based nonprofit that held the NIH grant. EcoHealth had sent some of those funds to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) to study bat coronaviruses collected in the wild and examine their potential to jump to humans.

In April 2020, after then-President Donald Trump claimed the SARS-CoV-2 virus could have come from the WIV lab, NIH terminated the EcoHealth grant with little explanation. That step was widely condemned by scientists, and OIG’s report now says NIH improperly executed the termination because it did not provide a valid reason or provide EcoHealth with required information for appealing the decision.