US scientists held secret talks with Covid ‘Batwoman’ amid drive to make coronaviruses more deadly… just before pandemic
• Shi Zhengli met with representatives from US non-profit EcoHealth in 2017
• US researchers supported her efforts to secure funding for research into bats
• The Wuhan-based scientist was conducting research on bats in southern China
The Chinese scientist who ran controversial experiments at the laboratory suspected of triggering Covid held a secret meeting with the US government to seek backing for a project that would go on to supercharge coronaviruses – shortly before the devastating outbreak started in her native Wuhan.
The June 2017 meeting at America’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) held by Shi Zhengli – known as ‘Batwoman’ because of her work on sampling and sequencing the animals’ viruses – will bolster fears of Western collusion in a Chinese cover-up after Covid resulted from a reckless laboratory experiment.
A new cache of documents, obtained by Freedom of Information campaigners and seen by The Mail on Sunday, reveal the extent to which the controversial work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was supported, and often funded, by America.
They show that US researchers seeking funding for work to engineer ‘spike proteins’ – making it easier for the bat viruses to infect human cells – misled the authorities about the risks of the experiments in order to maximise the chance of receiving grants.
The documents, obtained by US Right To Know, a non-profit public health research group, include an order made by Chinese intelligence on January 3, 2020 – two days after the world was first told about Covid – which decreed that its scientists should either share their samples with the government or destroy them ‘on the spot’.
Shi Zhengli has denounced 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’ due to her work sequencing the animals’ viruses, held meetings in 2017 with EcoHealth in 2017
Western intelligence agencies increasingly regard a lab leak in Wuhan as the most likely explanation for Covid, rather then the original theory that it was somehow spawned in a wildlife market in the city. The bombshell documents include emails sent by staff at EcoHealth Alliance – a now notorious health agency that has used US government money to sponsor bat virus experiments – ahead of the visit by Professor Zhengli.
