Video reportedly shows live bats at Wuhan lab, contradicting WHO investigation

The Wuhan Institute of Virology had live bats inside the Chinese biosafety level 4 laboratory in recent years, according to unearthed video revealed by Sky News Australia on Sunday. This discovery directly contradicts what World Health Organization investigators said earlier about the origins of COVID-19, dismissing the notion as a baseless conspiracy theory.

The eye-opening report included footage said to be taken from inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2017. The video allegedly shows bats being held in a cage at the Wuhan lab. Another purported scene from inside the premises shows a scientist feeding a worm to a bat.

WORLD EXCLUSIVE: Footage proves bats were kept in Wuhan labwww.youtube.com

Live bats inside the Wuhan lab is a contradiction to what was said by zoologist Peter Daszak, who was a member of the World Health Organization. Daszak was named to the WHO investigation team sent to China in January to investigate the origins of COVID-19.

Daszak is the president of the non-profit research organization Ecohealth Alliance, which received grants from the National Institutes of Health.

"EcoHealth's bat research in China was entirely funded through the $3.7 million NIH grant," NPR reported. "A small portion — about $76,000 per year — was used to pay the Wuhan lab for its on-the-ground work."

Daszak personally thanked Dr. Anthony Fauci for dismissing the possibility that the origin of the coronavirus pandemic may have been from a lab leak, according to leaked emails.

"I just wanted to say a personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators, for publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for COVID-19 from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology," Daszak wrote in the email to Fauci. "From my perspective, your comments are brave, and coming from your trusted voice, will help dispel the myths being spun around the virus' origins."

"He has worked closely with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) to test bats for coronaviruses with the potential to spill over into people," science journal Nature wrote about Daszak in December 2020.

At the same time Daszak joined the WHO investigative team, he publicly lampooned the idea that the coronavirus pandemic origin may have been from a lab leak. Daszak emphasized that the Wuhan lab doesn't have "live or dead bats" on-premises.

"This is a widely circulated conspiracy theory," Daszak tweeted in December 2020. "This piece describes work I'm the lead on & labs I've collaborated w/ for 15 yrs. They DO NOT have live or dead bats in them. There is no evidence anywhere that this happened. It's an error that I hope will be corrected."

In a since-deleted tweet from December 2020, Daszak reiterated that no live bats were sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

"No BATS were sent to Wuhan lab for genetic analysis of viruses collected in the field," Daszak wrote. "That's now how this science works. We collect bat samples, send them to the lab. We RELEASE bats where we catch them!"

National Review shared reports from Taiwan News, which claimed the Wuhan Institute of Virology reportedly filed patents for bat cages. There is also reports from the Daily Caller referring to an alleged archived version of the Chinese Academy of Science website claiming that the Wuhan facility has "126 cages for Japanese white rabbits, 340 cages for SD and Wistar rats, inbred strains, closed groups, mutant strains, and genetically engineered mice. There are 3,268 cages, 12 ferrets, 12 bats, and two species of cotton bollworm and beet armyworm, totaling 52 strains."

The newly unearthed video was reportedly recorded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which released the video to mark the launch of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in May 2017. The voice in the alleged video "speaks about the security precautions that are in place if 'an accident' occurs and reveals there had been 'intense clashes' with the French Government during the construction of the laboratory."

"The animal room in the P4 facility can handle a variety of species, including primate work with SARS-CoV-2," the video states.

The alleged video also shows "hundreds" of mice cages at the Wuhan lab.

The exposé on the Wuhan lab from Vanity Fair claimed that the Chinese military "engineered mice with humanized lungs" to test viruses on them in 2019, only months before the coronavirus pandemic erupted. The bombshell report said researchers with the Chinese military studied the humanized lungs to evaluate their "susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2."

During the G7 summit, the head of the World Health Organization said that the lab leak theory should not be ruled out.

When WHO director general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was asked about the possibility of a lab leak as the origin of the coronavirus pandemic, he responded, "Every hypothesis should be open."

Ghebreyesus added that China had not cooperated fully, and added that Beijing should provide more "transparency and cooperation" to help discover the origin of the virus out of "respect" for the dead.

"I think the respect these people deserve is knowing what the origin of this virus is so that we can prevent it from happening again," he said.

In February, members of the WHO investigation team said it is "extremely unlikely" that coronavirus leaked from the lab in Wuhan, instead they said it was likely spread naturally from animals to humans, possibly from a wet market in Wuhan.

"Our initial findings suggest that the introduction through an intermediary host species is the most likely pathway and one that will require more studies and more specific targeted research," Dr. Peter Ben Embarek from the World Health Organization said.