(today)

Daszak was a frequent traveller to Wuhan and the bat colonies of Yunnan with WIV scientists on projects funded by EcoHealth with US grants — until the Trump administration abruptly severed support, citing bio-security concerns.

The British scientist has forcefully dismissed the scenario of a laboratory leak as “baloney” and a “conspiracy theory”, and praised the work of his Chinese counterparts, notably Shi Zhengli, the “bat woman” of Wuhan, who traced the origins of the earlier Sars coronavirus outbreak to a colony of horseshoe bats in Yunnan.