More On:
COVID vaccine
California may require vaccinated workers to mask up after reopening
US announces global vaccine sharing program — as 12 states reach shot goal
Science chief wants next pandemic vaccine ready in 100 days
What we know so far about the COVID variant first found in India
A Chinese Communist Party military scientist who got funding from the National Institutes of Health filed a patent for a COVID-19 vaccine in February last year — raising fears the shot was being studied even before the pandemic became public, according to a new report.
Zhou Yusen, a decorated military scientist for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) who worked alongside the Wuhan Institute of Virology as well as US scientists, filed a patent on Feb. 24 2020, according to documents obtained by The Australian.
The patent — lodged by the “Institute of Military Medicine, Academy of Military Sciences of the PLA” — was filed just five weeks after China admitted there was human-to-human transmission of the virus, and months before Zhou died under mysterious circumstances, the report noted.
“This is something we have never seen achieved before, raising the question of whether this work may have started much earlier,” Prof. Nikolai Petrovsky from Flinders University told the paper.
Adding to the intrigue, Zhou later died under mysterious circumstances in May last year — something being looked into as part of the international investigation ordered by President Biden, the paper insisted.
Despite being an award-winning military scientist, there were no reports or tributes, with him just listed as “deceased” in a Chinese media report in July and a December scientific paper.
Before working for the PLA, Zhou had strong ties to the US, doing postdoctoral research at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and collaborating with the New York Blood Center, the report said.
Zhou worked closely with the Wuhan lab at the heart of increasing international focus over its possible links to the pandemic, as well as its now-notorious “bat woman” lead scientist, Shi Zhengli, the report said.
The close working relationship between the pair supports declassified US intelligence released in January that said the Wuhan lab was conducting “secret military activity,” The Australian said.
“Despite the WIV presenting itself as a civilian institution, the United States has determined that the WIV has collaborated on publications and secret projects with China’s military,” the intelligence stated.
“The United States and other donors who funded or collaborated on civilian research at the WIV have a right and obligation to determine whether any of our research funding was diverted to secret Chinese military projects at the WIV.”
They researched genetically manipulating coronaviruses soon before the pandemic hit, funded in part by the NIH, where Fauci runs the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the report said, citing a research paper submitted to the Journal of Virology in November 2019.
It was funded with three grants from the National Institutes of Health, via US universities. Zhou also worked alongside the University of Minnesota as well as the New York Blood Center, the report said.
The revelation appeared in a report by the paper’s award-winning investigations writer Sharri Markson as part of her research for an upcoming book, “What Really Happened In Wuhan.”
Fauci declined to be interviewed for the report, the paper said.
Share this article:
Source: Read Full Article
