The Chinese scientist who conducted controversial experiments in the lab suspected of causing Covid held a secret meeting with the US government to seek support for a project that would boost coronaviruses – shortly before the devastating outbreak in her native country Wuhan began.
The June 2017 meeting at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), held by Shi Zhengli – known as 'Batwoman' for her work sampling and sequencing animals' viruses – will raise fears of Western conspiracy in a post-Covid Chinese cover-up. The result of a reckless laboratory experiment.
A new collection of documents, obtained by Freedom of Information campaigners and seen by The Mail on Sunday, reveals the extent to which the controversial work of the Wuhan Institute of Virology was supported and often funded by America.
They show that US researchers seeking funding to develop 'spike proteins' – making it easier for the bat viruses to infect human cells – misled authorities about the risks of the experiments to maximize their chances of receiving grants.
The documents, obtained by US Right To Know, a nonprofit public health research group, include an order issued by Chinese intelligence on January 3, 2020 – two days after the world was first told about Covid – which determined that its scientists either share their samples with the government or destroy them 'on the spot'.
Shi Zhengli has slammed the idea of a lab leak as baseless, including claims that several of her colleagues in Wuhan were infected with Covid-19 before the outbreak emerged.
Shi Zhengli, known as 'Batwoman' for her work sequencing the animals' viruses, held meetings with EcoHealth in 2017
Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit non-governmental organization that supports various global health and pandemic prevention programs
The P4 laboratory of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, central China's Hubei province on April 17, 2020
Western intelligence agencies are increasingly considering a laboratory leak in Wuhan as the most likely explanation for Covid, rather than the original theory that it somehow emerged from a natural food market in the city. The bombshell documents include emails sent by employees of the EcoHealth Alliance – a now infamous health organization that has used US government money to sponsor experiments on bat viruses – ahead of Professor Zhengli's visit.
Using the subject heading: “Potential visit… by our Chinese co-researcher,” Peter Daszak, the $460,000-a-year head of EcoHealth, writes: “Zhengli and I will double down, and we will report on the work we do … as well as the large-scale surveillance of bats for emerging viruses'. Professor Zhengli became known as 'Batwoman' for her virus-hunting trips to the bat caves in southern China, hundreds of miles from Wuhan, where her team collected more than 10,000 animal samples.
The Covid-19 sequence closely matched that in those caves. Also invited to the meeting was Peng Zhou, associate professor at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
After the meeting, Mr. Daszak thanked the hosts, writing in an email that it was “nice to have the opportunity to personally introduce our employees.”
EcoHealth also lobbied the Pentagon for funding for Zhengli to develop high-risk coronaviruses by synthesizing spike proteins with furin cleavage sites, which were designed to bind more easily to human receptors, at the Wuhan Institute starting in December 2018, a year before the Covid-19 -crisis. 19 virus emerged.
In an email, Dr. acknowledged. Ralph Baric, a coronavirus expert at the center of concerns over gain-of-function studies, that US researchers would “freak out” if they knew new coronavirus engineering and testing was being done in poorly secured Chinese labs. , but disguised it to make the US government “comfortable” with the plan, which was intended to help prevent pandemics.
Research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology before the Covid-19 pandemic on coronaviruses has attracted attention from abroad
EcoHealth says the documents are incomplete and that the “allegations are false, based on misunderstandings of edits and comments on the document, and based on misleading out-of-context quotes and a lack of understanding of the process by which federal grants are awarded.”
It is believed that the Covid-19 pandemic was first detected at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan
Boris Johnson is among senior Conservatives who say the UK's Covid inquiry should investigate the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic
That proposal was rejected by the US government, but critics say the plans in the proposal serve as a 'blueprint' for creating Covid. Professor Zhengli has denounced the idea of a lab leak as baseless, including claims by US intelligence that several of her colleagues at the institute were infected before the outbreak occurred.
“How on earth can I provide evidence for something that there is no evidence for?” she said when confronted with the claims. “I don't know how the world has gotten to the point where it's constantly pouring filth on an innocent scientist.”
Last year, the World Health Organization announced that research into the source of the virus had been halted due to problems conducting crucial research in China.
In April 2020, The Mail on Sunday became the first mainstream media outlet in the world to reveal fears that the virus had leaked from a Chinese laboratory, reporting that Cobra – the government's secret emergency committee – was investigating information about an alleged accident in the Wuhan Institute. of Virology.
Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson is among a growing number of senior Conservatives who believe the British government's official Covid inquiry should investigate whether the origins of the virus were natural or the result of an accidental leak from Wuhan. A source close to Mr Johnson told the MoS last month: 'Boris believes it is legitimate to ask how the virus spread and whether it was man-made or manipulated.'
EcoHealth says the documents are incomplete and that the “allegations are false, based on misunderstandings of edits and comments on the document, and based on misleading out-of-context quotes and a lack of understanding of the process by which federal grants are awarded.”