SHOCKING pictures show how scientists in Wuhan’s “Patient Zero” lab were handling dangerous viruses with no protection.
Researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology revealed they were bitten by bats while collecting samples in a cave in 2017 – two years before the pandemic.
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The footage has resurfaced after Ben Hu was named as Covid “patient zero” along with his two colleagues Ping Yu and Yan Zhu from the lab.
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.
Several US government officials have now identified the trio 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.
A source told The Sun that Hu appeared in footage taken in 2017 and aired by Chinese state-run CCTV working in the Wuhan lab without protective gear.
The same video shows other scientists from the Wuhan lab hunting for bat viruses in Yunnan caves with no gloves or masks.
Another shocking picture shows swelling on a scientist’s limb after a bat’s fangs reportedly went through his rubber gloves “like a needle”.
It’s understood Hu – assistant researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology at the time – was not part of the team collecting bat samples while wearing no protection.
DRASTIC – an international team of scientists and sleuths attempting to fill in the gaps on Covid’s origins – analysed the footage back in 2020.
They revealed that several researchers had been bitten by the bats – which carry thousands of deadly viruses.
We previously revealed that the Wuhan lab lied about taking safety precautions when collecting bat samples.
Shocking photos – which revealed a scandalous lack of safety – were deleted from the website of under-fire China science hub.
One worker admitted being sprayed with bat blood or urine as images showed staff brazenly collecting samples with no face masks or protective suits.
And some scientists didn’t even wear gloves as they entered caves to collect faecal bat swab samples – beaming for the camera and oblivious to the dangers.
One of the party even gave an interview to state-run news agency Xinhua, admitting he forgot his protective gear and was sprayed with bat urine or blood.
Many experts and intelligence officials have long suspected bungling scientists at the lab accidentally spread Covid during so-called “gain of function” experiments on bat coronaviruses.
It’s a game changer if it can be proven that Hu got sick with Covid before anyone else
Jamie Metzl
And 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.
But author and journalist Sharri Markson – who The Sun interviewed on the lab leak theory in 2021 – said it marked an “explosive development”.
And Jamie Metzl, a former member of the WHO 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 Shi’s lab.”
Hu’s biography on the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s website shows he was working as an assistant researcher, alongside a photo of him.
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.
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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 was spreading around the world – raising suspicion of a possible lab leak.
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 WIV workers but it seemed too simple.”
Earlier this year, the director of the FBI, 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 – something 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.
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