Shi Zhengli, the Director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases, lists six-figure grants from Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases on her resume.
Also known as the “bat woman” for her work on SARS-like coronaviruses, Shi Zhengli was recently referenced by Senator Rand Paul while pressing Dr. Fauci on his agency’s financial ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“For years, Dr. Ralph Baric, a virologist in the U.S., has been collaborating with Dr. Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Virology Institute, sharing his discoveries about how to create super viruses. This gain-of-function research has been funded by the NIH. … Dr. Fauci, do you still support funding of the NIH funding of the lab in Wuhan,” Senator Paul inquired before Fauci asserted the claims were “entirely and completely incorrect.”
Shi’s resume, however, lists a $665,000 grant from the NIAID aimed at studying “the ecology of bat coronaviruses and the risk of future coronavirus emergence” from the year 2014 to 2019.
The six-figure grant included on Shi’s resume is part of a larger $3.7 million grant from the NIAID to New York-based EcoHealth Alliance. Over a dozen studies included on her resume list the organization’s president, Peter Daszak, as a co-author.
Two additional studies on Shi’s resume count Dr. Baric as a co-author: “Two Mutations Were Critical For Bat-to-Human Transmission of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus” and “A SARS-like Cluster of Circulating Bat Coronaviruses Shows Potential for Human Emergence.”
Among Shi’s “research interests” are the “interspecies infection mechanism of zoonotic viruses” and “molecular epidemiology of emerging zoonotic viruses,” and her professional bio reveals her robust research portfolio involving SARS-like coronaviruses found
Prof Zhengli Shi’s researches focus on the molecular epidemiology and interspecies infection mechanism of emerging zoonotic viruses, especially bat-borne viruses, as well as discovery and characterization of novel viruses in bats and other wildlife. She has gain rich expertise on pathogen biology of coronaviruses and other emerging viruses of bat origin, virus discovery, virus evolution, and development of diagnostic technologies for emerging viruses. Prof Shi has identified ultimately the animal origin of SARS, by discovering genetically diverse bat SARS-related coronaviruses (SARSr-CoV), isolating bat SARSr-CoVs highly homologous to SARS-CoV that are able to the same receptor as SARS-CoV, and revealing the potential recombination origin of SARS-CoV. She has discovered a large number of novel viruses from Chinese bat populations, including viruses with potential public health significance.
