NEW YORK POST – Scientists conducting research on novel coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were the first humans to contract COVID-19, according to a new report.
“Patients zero” included Ben Hu, Ping Yu and Yan Zhu — scientists researching SARS-like viruses at the institute, according to an investigation by journalists Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi published on the Substack newsletter Public.
The three scientists were researching “gain-of-function” experiments with the virus — which increases its infectiousness and makes pathogens stronger in order to better understand their dangers — when they became sick in the fall of 2019, multiple US government officials reportedly told the journalists.
The new details were revealed about four months after FBI Director Christopher Wray said the bureau believes that the horrific COVID-19 virus responsible for millions of deaths likely originated from an accidental outbreak at a Chinese lab.
“The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan, China,” Wray said in an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier.
In 2019, 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.
Hu studied under virologist Shi Zhengli who is known as “the bat woman of China” for her research on SARS-like coronaviruses of bat origin. Zhengli has come under intense scrutiny since the outbreak of COVID-19 was traced back to Wuhan.
“Ben Hu is essentially the next Shi Zhengli,” Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, told Public.
“He was her star pupil. He had been making chimeric SARS-like viruses and testing these in humanized mice. If I had to guess who would be doing this risky virus research and most at risk of getting accidentally infected, it would be him … ”
