Wuhan scientists were planning to release enhanced airborne coronaviruses into Chinese bat populations to inoculate them against diseases that could jump to humans, leaked grant proposals dating from 2018 show.
New documents show that just 18 months before the first Covid-19 cases appeared, researchers had submitted plans to release skin-penetrating nanoparticles containing "Novel chimeric spike proteins" of bat coronaviruses into cave bats in Yunnan, China.
They also planned to create chimeric viruses, genetically enhanced to infect humans more easily, and requested $14million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to fund the work.
Papers, confirmed as genuine by a former member of the Trump administration, show they were hoping to introduce "Human-specific cleavage sites" to bat coronaviruses which would make it easier for the virus to enter human cells.
In a statement, Drastic said: "Given that we find in this proposal a discussion of the planned introduction of human-specific cleavage sites, a review by the wider scientific community of the plausibility of artificial insertion is warranted."
The bid was submitted by British zoologist Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance, the US-based organisation, which has worked closely with the Wuhan Institute of Virology researching bat coronaviruses.
Team members included Dr Shi Zhengli, the WIV researcher dubbed "Bat woman", pictured below, as well as US researchers from the University of North Carolina and the United States Geological Survey National Wildlife Health Centre.
Wednesday, September 22, 2021
Wuhan scientists planned to release coronaviruses into cave bats 18 months before outbreak
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