The National Institutes of Health is still blaming processing delays for public records requests on the COVID-19 shutdown from five years ago, with response times to simple inquiries reportedly averaging months.
To this day, NIH’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) portal says hospitals, research institutions, healthcare companies, and medical professionals whose records are subject to information requests “remain severely affected by the pandemic” and “require additional time to respond.” NIH records officers may also need more time to review and approve redactions, the agency says.
In 2024, NIH had an average simple request response rate of 130 business days, according to a new Open the Books report on FOIA wait times across federal agencies.
However, Open the Books, a government watchdog known for filing FOIA inquiries, waited years for responses to two NIH records requests, both submitted in early 2023.
Open the Books says one records search, seeking information surrounding top bioethicist Dr. Christine Grady’s ethical consultations for NIH’s Clinical Center, the agency’s on-site hospital, is still incomplete two years later.
Grady, the wife of former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci, is no longer the chief of NIH’s Bioethics Department. Dr. Fauci retired from NIH in 2022.
“While we’ve waited for answers, both have left government, and their household wealth has steadily grown to $12.6M at the last count,” Open the Books said.
When the FOIA request was filed, Open the Books sought details of Grady’s day-to-day work and the spending she oversaw.
“This example highlights why FOIA expediency is crucial for accountability: Grady is married to Dr. Anthony Fauci and they’ve frequently praised one another for their insights, yet they were never required to file a nepotism waiver or detail any conflicts of interest,” Open the Books said.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI AND WIFE HAD $11 MILLION NET WORTH BEFORE HE LEFT GOVERNMENT
The other Open the Books records request, which was finally fulfilled in June 2025, concerned the budget of NIH’s Bioethics Department.
According to 2024 data obtained by Open the Books, it took 31 federal agencies an average of over 100 business days, approximately five calendar months, to respond to simple requests.
At two U.S. subagencies, the Department of Commerce’s Office of the Under Secretary for Economic Affairs and the Office of Enterprise Integration within the Department of Veterans Affairs, FOIA wait times for simple searches amounted on average to more than 800 business days, roughly 40 months or three-plus years, Open the Books found.
Lengthy delays frequently lead to a backlog of unfulfilled FOIA requests. In fiscal 2022, the government-wide FOIA backlog surpassed 200,000 requests for the first time, according to the Office of Government Accountability (GAO).
FOIA STAFFING CUTS ENDANGER FUTURE OF GOVERNMENT TRANSPARENCY
Open the Books suggests that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) update the slow and out-of-date legacy FOIA software to automatically handle repetitive redactions, sometimes spanning hundreds of pages, all currently done by hand. Among other recommendations for reform, Open the Books advised that routine records such as staff lists, payrolls, and royalty data could be publicly posted, obviating the need for staffers to respond to common requests for large datasets.
NIH was contacted for comment on the disclaimer citing the pandemic for FOIA processing delays.