Millions died, economies were destroyed and years of people’s lives were lost to the Covid-19 pandemic – which some blame the Chinese ‘batwoman’ for bringing into the world
15:58, 11 Jan 2025Updated 16:04, 11 Jan 2025
The Chinese ‘batwoman’ has been blamed by some for the Covid-19 pandemic(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
The woman at the centre of the Covid-19 lab leak theory is still carrying out “risky” experiments on coronaviruses five years after the respiratory illness locked down the world, boffins warn.
Chinese scientist Shi Zhengli became the “batwoman” for her work on bat coronaviruses in Wuhan. The devastating virus emerged just around the corner from her lab where her team at Wuhan Institute of Virology collected more than 20,000 bat samples from colonies across China for nearly two decades.
Zhengli was cast into the world’s spotlight when Covid-19 shut down China before going on to kill millions and destroy economies.
A Congressional report suggested the ‘weight of evidence’ backed up the lab leak theory
At the time, many in the scientific community questioned whether the virus had leaked out of a lab due to its unusual features that suggest it was genetically engineered.
And it isn’t just tinfoil hat-clad internet crackpots espousing the theory, a landmark congressional report concluded the pandemic was backed up by the “weight of the evidence”.
Despite the report’s findings, Shi continues to carry out her research, which has been dubbed “dangerous”. In a published paper, the “batwoman” boasted they built the first “customised” coronavirus “receptors”, according to the Sun.
Former director of America’s CDC Robert Redfield warned the research could have “potentially catastrophic consequences”. In layman’s terms, Shi is creating the building blocks to change the species a disease infects – which includes humans.
Mr Redfield said: “Take bird flu – you can modify the receptor so that instead of chickens and turkeys, it can infect humans. It’s potentially dangerous research. You are taking a non-pathogenic virus and changing it so that it could end up being dangerous to humans.
“You may have a pathogen that is restricted to pigs – but now you could totally change it so that it’s highly infectious to other species too. She’s playing around with bat viruses and modifying their receptor – so now they’ll infect cows or chickens, for example. It’s ill-advised.
“There’s potential catastrophic consequences. It could cause a new pandemic in animals or humans.”
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