Covid-19 ‘patient zero’ identified in bombshell report

According to the report, the scientist, Ben Hu, was conducting risky tests at the Wuhan Institute of Virology with two colleagues, Ping Yu and Yan Zhu.

It’s understood all three fell ill with Covid-like symptoms and needed hospital care weeks before China disclosed the virus outbreak to the world.

They had never been named until now, The Sun reports.

Several US government officials have now identified the three scientists in a bombshell report by journalists Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi.

Writing in the Substack newsletter Public, they alleged the scientists were experimenting with coronaviruses when they became sick in 2019.

Many experts and intelligence officials have long suspected scientists at the lab accidentally spread Covid-19 during so-called “gain of function” experiments on bat coronaviruses.

The naming of “patient zero” could be the so-called smoking gun – adding to mounting circumstantial evidence of a lab leak.

It’s not clear who in the US government had the intelligence about the sick lab workers, how long they had it, and why it was not shared with the public.

The Australian journalist and Sky News host Sharri Markson, who spoke to The Sun about the lab leak theory in 2021, said it marked an “explosive development”.

Jamie Metzl, a former member of the World Health Organisation advisory committee on human genome editing, described it as a possible “game changer”.

“It’s a game changer if it can be proven that Hu got sick with Covid before anyone else,” he said.

“That would be the ‘smoking gun’. Hu was the lead hands-on researcher in (virologist Shi Zhengli’s) lab.”

DRASTIC – an international team of scientists and sleuths attempting to fill in the gaps on Covid-19’s origins – researched the three scientists back in 2021.

Hu’s biography on the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s website shows he was working as an assistant researcher.

He was said to be the “star pupil” of virologist Shi Zhengli – the virologist at the lab who became known as “batwoman” for her research on bat coronaviruses.

According to Markson, the author of What Really Happened in Wuhan, Hu was running a state-funded project in 2019 to see if two new coronaviruses could infect humans.

The study involved souping up the viruses and experimenting with them on humanised mice.

But the results were never published and the study’s existence was wiped from the internet as Covid-19 was spreading around the world, raising suspicion of a possible lab leak.

A source told The Sun that footage taken in 2017 and aired by Chinese state-run TV showed Hu working in the lab without protective gear.

The same video shows scientists from the Wuhan lab hunting for bat viruses with inadequate protective gear.

Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at MIT and Harvard, told Public: “Ben Hu is essentially the next Shi Zhengli.

“He was her star pupil. He had been making chimeric SARS-like viruses and testing these in humanised 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.”

She added: “If this info had been made public in May of 2020, I doubt that many in the scientific community and the media would have spent the last three years raving about a raccoon dog or pangolin in a wet market.”

Dr Steven Quay, a US scientist, said: “He was always my first choice for one of the infected Wuhan Institute of Virology workers but it seemed too simple.”

A bill signed by US President Joe Biden this year called for the release of the names of the sick researchers, their symptoms, and whether they had been involved with or exposed to coronavirus research.

Next week, the US is set to release previously classified material, which might include the names of the three Wuhan scientists.

Earlier this year, FBI director Christopher Wray said “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 has long been accused of attempting to cover up or distort its role in the story of Covid-19, which it denies.

But last month, China’s own former government scientist admitted the Wuhan lab leak theory should not be ruled out, sparking fury from Beijing.

Professor George Gao, the former chief of China’s Centre for Disease Control, played a key role in the efforts to trace the mystery origins of Covid-19, saying scientists should “suspect anything”.

Speaking to the BBC Radio 4 podcast Fever: The Hunt for Covid’s Origin, Prof Gao said: “You can always suspect anything. That’s science.

“Don’t rule out anything.”

Prof Gao retired from the CDC last year after playing a top role in the pandemic response and efforts to find the origins of the virus.

He would have had access to top secret government information on the outbreak of Covid-19.

He said a formal investigation into the Wuhan Institute of Virology was carried out by a government department.

The government scientist claimed the “lab was double-checked by the experts in the field”.

Investigators believe scientists were working with Chinese military to create a mutant virus and pursue bioweapons just as the pandemic started.

The findings follow a team of US investigators who combed through top-secret intercepted communications and research.

In 2016, researchers discovered a new fatal type of coronavirus in a mineshaft in Mojiang, Yunnan province.

But they failed to warn the world about it, which was then subsequently transported to the Wuhan lab and the work became classified.

The virus is the only known immediate relative of Covid-19 known to be in existence pre-pandemic.

One US investigator told The Times: “The trail of papers starts to go dark.

“That’s exactly when the classified program 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.”

The findings came after a scientist who worked closely with the Wuhan lab claimed Covid was genetically engineered and leaked from the facility.

This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission