Two years before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology planned on conducting a study in bat caves to release enhanced airborne coronavirus particles and infect the bats, thereby inoculating them against diseases that could jump to humans, leaked papers published by The Telegraph on Tuesday revealed.
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The documents – confirmed as genuine by a former Trump administration official – were released by Drastic, a web-based investigation team that was established by researchers from across the world to investigate the origins of COVID-19.
Although it is unclear whether researchers went ahead with the study, the papers do reveal that 18 months before the pandemic broke out in Wuhan – and from there spread to the rest of the world – scientists made a formal request to release "skin-penetrating nanoparticles ... of bat coronaviruses into cave bats," according to the paper.
The team, which included scientists from the United States as well, planned on creating genetically enhanced viruses that could infect humans more easily and requested $14 million to fund the project.
It should be noted that such studies are common and are often conducted to learn about virus capabilities in order to allow nations to prepare for possible outbreaks ahead of time.
Nevertheless, the fact that researchers planned on releasing deliberately modified coronavirus particles adds credence to the belief that COVID-19 did not just mutate on its own from previous strains.
Concerns that scientists in China might be responsible for the outbreak of the pandemic led to the Biden administration launching an investigation into the origins of COVID-19 several weeks ago.
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