Wuhan Institute of Virology

Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) is a laboratory in Wuhan, China to study viruses administered by the Chinese Academy of Sciences under control of the CCP Discipline Inspection Commission. The lab is near the site where the Communist Party of China claims the Wuhan virus was first detected in December 2019.

The lab was founded in 1956 as the Wuhan Microbiology Laboratory. It has received a total of $7.4 million in grants from the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a U.S. agency led by Dr. Anthony Fauci. In 2015, the lab was upgraded to biosafety level 4 (BSL–4) with the help of French engineers. It is first such lab in China. SARS escaped from a Beijing lab twice in 2004 and the upgrade was intended to address this problem. In January 2018 U.S. embassy officials in Beijing warned about safety risks at the Wuhan lab researching infectious diseases, including coronaviruses from bats. One of two "Sensitive but Unclassified" U.S. State Department cables warned about biosecurity and management problems at the lab.

At the time of the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, the WIV was run by Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee Changcai HE, a CCP apparatchik. Changcai HE was the chairman of the corporate trade union of Wuhan Branch from January 2004 to September 2013, and the Corporate Secretary of the Party at Wuhan Branch from October 2005 to July 2013. Since August 2013, Changcai HE has been the deputy director general of Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Dany Shoham, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who studied Chinese biological warfare, said the Wuhan Institute of Virology is linked to Beijing's covert bioweapons program. He said the secure Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory at the institute was engaged in research on the Ebola, Nipah and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever viruses.

The Wuhan virology institute is under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, but certain laboratories within it “have linkage with the PLA or BW-related elements within the Chinese defense establishment,” he said. Suspicions were raised about the Wuhan Institute of Virology when a group of Chinese virologists working in Canada improperly sent to China samples of what he described as some of the deadliest viruses on earth, including the Ebola virus.

Peter Daszak (right) toasting Shi Zhengli (left).

In February 2020, Major General Chen Wei, described as China's top biowarfare expert, was placed in charge of the lab. CCP boss Yuan Zhiming denied that his lab is the source of the Wuhan virus.

Shi Zhengli

In 2015, Shi Zhengli, a virologist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, co-authored an article that warned of viruses similar to that responsible for the SARS circulating among the Chinese bat population that may pose a serious future threat.

Fauci. More than 600,000 Americans died after gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab.

NIAID funding

From 2014 to 2019, $826,277 was given to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for bat coronavirus research by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which was headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci. In an April 15, 2020 email marked “high” importance, Principal Deputy Director of NIH Lawrence Tabak emailed Fauci, NIH Director Francis Collins, and other NIH officials with the subject line: “HEADS UP: Wuhan lab research.” Tabak provides details of the grant to Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, for a project titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.” Tabak continues, saying, “The 3.7M dollar figure is over 6 years to all sites which include (several in) China, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Myanmar. We estimate that approximately $826,300 has been spent at this site since the inception of the grant. Yearly costs appear to be about 80K/year. The grant is in year 6 of a total of 10 year.”

A January 9, 2020, email exchange labeled “high” importance between NIAID Senior Scientific Advisor Dr. David Morens and Daszak details the relationship between the Fauci agency and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

On January 23, 2020, the day the Wuhan viral outbreak was announced to the world, a senior NIH official, Melinda Hoskins, forwarded a Daily Mail article to colleagues discussing NIH/NIAID funding of the bat virus research, and noting that Fauci would be briefing senators the following morning. Hoskins says, “Would you please confirm the exact nature of our support to the Wuhan Institute of Virology/Biosafety Lab.”

On October 1, 2017, after receiving Daszak’s email related to his then-unpublished paper describing detailed research into a novel bat-born virus tied to Swine Acute Diarrheal Syndrome, Fauci forwards Daszak’s email and paper on to NIH official Greg Folkers, saying, “Confidential, but fyi for you.” Daszak says, “You should know that this work was supported by a NIAID ROl that [NIH’s] Erik Stemmy is the Program Officer for, and that I’m PI [principal investigator] on, with Zhengli Shi [the director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases of the Wuhan Institute of Virology] as co-PI.”

State Department Fact Sheet

In 2015, Chinese military scientists discussed how to weaponize SARS coronaviruses to "cause the enemy’s medical system to collapse." In a 263-page document, written by People's Liberation Army scientists and senior Chinese public health officials and obtained by the US State Department during its investigation into the origins of COVID-19, suggests that SARS coronaviruses could herald a "new era of genetic weapons," and noted that they can be "artificially manipulated into an emerging human ­disease virus, then weaponized and unleashed in a way never seen before." A U.S. State Department Fact Sheet issued in January 2021 stated:

1. Illnesses inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV):

The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses. This raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli’s public claim that there was “zero infection” among the WIV’s staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses.

Accidental infections in labs have caused several previous virus outbreaks in China and elsewhere, including a 2004 SARS outbreak in Beijing that infected nine people, killing one.

The CCP has prevented independent journalists, investigators, and global health authorities from interviewing researchers at the WIV, including those who were ill in the fall of 2019. Any credible inquiry into the origin of the virus must include interviews with these researchers and a full accounting of their previously unreported illness.

The State Department also observed that — at least since 2016 — the WIV had been involved with researching bat coronavirus that is 96.2% similar to the SARS-CoV-2, the Wuhan coronavirus. WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli had previously said that the genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 didn’t match.

Moreover, the State Department says the WIV hasn’t been transparent about their studies and said a full accounting was needed for why the WIV altered and removed their records about the bat coronavirus and other viruses.

The State Department also observes that the WIV has conducted “secret projects with China’s military” and did “classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017.”

The State Department's former lead investigator who oversaw the Task Force into the COVID-19 virus origin, David Asher, said that he not only believes the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but that it may have been the result of research that the Chinese military, or People’s Liberation Army, was doing on a bioweapon. Asher said during a panel discussion at the Hudson Institute: The Origins of the COVID-10: Policy Implications and Lessons for the Futur, "this has turned out to be the greatest weapon in history. You've taken out 15 to 20 percent of global GDP. You've killed millions of people. The Chinese population has been barely affected."

University of Hamburg study

A February 2021 study released in February 2021 from renowned University of Hamburg researcher Roland Wiesendanger concluded that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the “cause” of COVID-19.

The study argues against two prevailing theories that COVID-19 was transmitted to humans either via a wet market or a lab accident. “To date, there is no scientifically based rigorous evidence for either mentioned theories."

A summary of the report emphasizes the fact that the host has still not been identified; the virus can “couple surprisingly well to human cell receptors”; The Wuhan lab “carried out genetic manipulations on coronaviruses for many years with the aim of making them more contagious, dangerous and deadly for humans”; and that there were “significant safety deficiencies” at the facility:

• In contrast to earlier coronavirus-related epidemics such as SARS and MERS, until today, i.e. well over a year after the outbreak of the current pandemic, no intermediate host has been identified that has enabled the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 pathogens from bats to humans could. The zoonosis theory as a possible explanation for the pandemic therefore has no sound scientific basis.
• The SARS-CoV-2 viruses can couple surprisingly well to human cell receptors and penetrate human cells. This is made possible by special cell receptor binding domains connected to a special (furin) cleavage site of the coronavirus spike protein. Both properties together were previously unknown in coronaviruses and indicate a non-natural origin of the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen.
• A research group at the virological institute in the city of Wuhan has carried out genetic manipulations on coronaviruses for many years with the aim of making them more contagious, dangerous and deadly for humans. This is proven by numerous publications in the scientific specialist literature.
• There were significant safety deficiencies in the virological institute in the city of Wuhan even before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, which are documented.
• There are numerous direct indications of a laboratory origin for the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen. A young scientist from the virological institute in Wuhan is said to have been infected first. There are also numerous indications that the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen spread from the virological institute in the city of Wuhan and beyond as early as October 2019. There are also indications of a corresponding investigation of the virological institute by the Chinese authorities in the first half of October 2019.

History

In 1956, the Wuhan Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences was established.

In November 1961, the Wuhan Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences was renamed the Central South Institute of Microbiology.

In October 1962, the Central South Institute of Microbiology was renamed to the Wuhan Institute of Microbiology.

In 1966, the local branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences was relegated to the leadership of Hubei Province.

In 1970, it was renamed to the Hubei Institute of Microbiology.

In 1978, before the Science and Technology Conference, it returned to the Chinese Academy of Sciences and was renamed to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In 2002, it entered the sequence of the National Science and Technology Innovation Projects of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In 2003, the “One, Three, Five” (One goal with 3 five-year) Plan was carried out.

In November 2004, the establishment of the State Key Laboratory of Virology was approved by the Ministry of Science and Technology. The lab is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education, and supervised by both Wuhan University and Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In January 2012, the China Virus Resource Center of the Institute was approved by China Quality Certification Center, and obtained ISO9001: 2008 quality management system certificate, ISO14001: 2004 environmental management system certificate, and GB / T28001-2001 occupational health and safety management system certificate. In June, the Animal Experiment Center of Zhengdian Science Park of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences began operation.

In 2012, Public Technical Service Center of the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s was established and consisted of an analysis and testing center, a BSL-3 laboratory, an experimental animal center, a radioisotope laboratory, and a network information center.

In 2014, the first action plan of the Big Science Center was launched.

In January 2015, China’s first laboratory with the highest level of biosafety protection, the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory (namely, Wuhan BSL-4 Laboratory) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences was completed. In December, it was rated as a civilized unit in Hubei Province.

In July 2016, the Wuhan Institute of Virology held a ground-breaking ceremony for a comprehensive experimental research base of virology and biosafety.

On January 9, 2017, the Obama White House retored funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

In January 2018, Wuhan National Biosafety Level 4 Laboratory (BSL-4 Laboratory) passed the national standard.

See also

• Technocracy

External link

• SPECIAL INVESTIGATION: What Really Happened in Wuhan - SkyNews Australia