A new investigation has claimed three Wuhan lab scientists researching Covid-19 were the first to test positive.
According to the investigation, so-called Patients Zero included Ben Hu, Ping Yu and Yan Zhu who were all researching SARS-like viruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. As reported by the Mirror, journalists Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi published their findings in a Substack newsletter.
Multiple US government officials reportedly told the journalists, in the autumn of 2019, the three scientists were researching "gain-of-function" experiments with the virus when they became unwell. Gain of function research is medical research that genetically alters an organism and increases its infectiousness and makes pathogens stronger in order to better understand their dangers.
Two of the allegedly infected scientists, Hu and Yu, co-authored a paper about the genetic lineage of SARS-related coronavirus in bats across China that they had studied in 2019.
The department stated in a now-archived, but still available to read, fact sheet published in January 2021: “The US government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the [Wuhan Institute of Virology] became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses.”
However, later in February the Department of Energy concluded they had “low confidence” the virus responsible for the pandemic originated in a Chinese laboratory. Hu studied under virologist Shi Zhengli who has repeatedly denied the allegations and told the New York Times her lab did not hold any source of the strain that caused the pandemic.
On Sunday it was claimed that scientists in Wuhan also worked alongside the country’s military to combine the world’s most deadly viruses before the Covid pandemic began. An investigation by The Sunday Times claimed US investigators believe one of the reasons why there is no published information on the work is because it was done in collaboration with researchers from the Chinese military.
An investigator told the newspaper: "The trail of papers starts to go dark. That’s exactly when the classified programme kicked off. My view is that the reason [it] was covered up was due to military secrecy related to [the army’s] pursuit of dual-use capabilities in virological biological weapons and vaccines."
Another person said: "It has become increasingly clear that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was involved in the creation, promulgation and cover-up of the Covid-19 pandemic."
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