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COVID-19 ‘Patient Zero’ Was Recipient Of U.S. Taxpayer Money For Dangerous Research

COVID-19 'Patient Zero' Was Recipient Of U.S. Taxpayer Money For Dangerous Research

(Photo by HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images)

Dylan Housman Deputy News Editor
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The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) researcher who is suspected of being the first human being to contract COVID-19 was receiving U.S. taxpayer funding for dangerous gain-of-function research, a watchdog group revealed last week.

Ben Hu, whom Public reported was among three WIV researchers who contracted COVID-19 late in 2019, was listed as the lead investigator on American taxpayer-funded grants given to the WIV, White Coat Waste Project (WCW) revealed. The total amount sent to Hu’s lab has not been made public, but a 2021 FOIA request filed by WCW reveals that the projects he was a part of received more than $41 million from NIAID, led at the time by Dr. Anthony Fauci, and USAID.

Hu reportedly played a “central role” in the gain-of-function research taking place at the WIV. Researchers there were collecting samples of bat-based coronaviruses from the wild and genetically modifying them to make them more dangerous to humans.

Proponents of the “lab-leak theory” believe that the COVID-19 pandemic began when the virus was inadvertently leaked from the WIV as part of a research mishap. The revelation that “patient zero” was likely one of the three researchers working there is a major new piece of evidence in support of that theory.

Hu is considered a protégé of China’s leading bat virus researcher Dr. Shi Zhengli, known in China as the “batwoman.” It was already known that some researchers at the WIV fell ill sometime around Nov. 2019, but the identities of those researchers were not known until Public reported them last week. (RELATED: New Evidence Of Chinese Military ‘Shadow Labs’ At Wuhan Institute Of Virology)

A 2017 video shows Hu and another researcher handling lab specimens without protective gear. Hu is also cited on several papers with EcoHealth Alliance founder Peter Daszak, who funneled taxpayer grants from the National Institutes of Health to the WIV for gain-of-function research.