Posted on 08/11/2026 9:08:04 AM PDT by Red Badger
Shi Zhengli is recruiting researchers for “pathogen discovery/coronavirus” and “cross-species infection risk” work. NIH-backed scientists continued collaborating with her after COVID, including on research using materials she supplied from her new Chinese laboratory.
Shi Zhengli, the Chinese virologist whose years of bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology made her one of the most scrutinized scientists in the world after COVID-19, did not disappear.
She moved on to another powerful Chinese state laboratory, where she is now helping train a new generation of coronavirus researchers.
Chinese-language records reviewed for this report show Shi is currently affiliated with Guangzhou Laboratory, a national laboratory established in 2021 that describes itself as part of China’s strategic scientific and technological apparatus for combating respiratory diseases. Her current research profile focuses on discovering new viruses in bats and other wildlife, studying their biological characteristics, and investigating the mechanisms that allow viruses to jump between species.
Even more striking is what Guangzhou Laboratory is recruiting scientists to do under Shi today.
A 2026 doctoral recruitment notice lists Shi as an adviser in pathogen biology with a research concentration explicitly described as “pathogen discovery/coronavirus.”
Another 2026 doctoral program, jointly operated by Guangzhou Laboratory and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, lists Shi as an adviser for “pathogen discovery and cross-species infection risk research.” Students in the program conduct their coursework primarily through the Wuhan Institute of Virology before carrying out most of their scientific research and dissertation work at Guangzhou Laboratory.
In other words, Shi has not simply continued her old line of work. Chinese government institutions are actively building a new pipeline of researchers around it.
And American taxpayer-funded scientists have continued working within Shi’s research orbit after COVID.
NIH-Backed Scientists Continued Coronavirus Research With Shi
In 2024, Shi was among the authors of a major Nature study titled “Design of customized coronavirus receptors”. Her affiliations on the paper included both the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Guangzhou Laboratory.
The study developed engineered receptors that allowed researchers to study a range of coronaviruses. Among the experiments, researchers used a customized receptor to rescue wild-type and fluorescently tagged HKU5-1 coronavirus and to isolate an HKU5 coronavirus from bat samples.
The study was not funded exclusively by China.
Its acknowledgments list multiple awards from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, including P01AI167966, DP1AI158186 and contract 75N93022C00036, along with NIH instrumentation grant S10OD032290. Those American awards were credited to University of Washington coronavirus researcher David Veesler.
NIH records identify P01AI167966 as an NIAID-supported University of Washington project. The Seattle Structural Genomics Center for Infectious Disease also identifies 75N93022C00036 as federal NIAID funding.
NIH-Backed Coronavirus Research Used Material Supplied By Shi From Guangzhou
An even cleaner connection appeared in a 2025 Nature Microbiology study examining MERS-related bat coronaviruses and their ability to use ACE2 receptors.
The acknowledgments state that researchers received ACE2 plasmids from “Z.-L. Shi (Guangzhou National Laboratory)” for use in the study.
The very same study acknowledges NIAID support through P01AI167966, DP1AI158186 and 75N93022C00036, again awarded to Veesler.
That produces a remarkably straightforward fact:
NIH-backed coronavirus research published in 2025 used research materials supplied by Shi Zhengli from Guangzhou National Laboratory.
The paper examined MERS-related coronaviruses, including whether they could use ACE2 receptors from different species. Researchers reported that one virus tested, EjCoV-3, was capable of using human ACE2 for entry, although the study described that usage as relatively weak or suboptimal.
Shi Is Still Studying Bat Coronaviruses That Can Use Human ACE2
Shi’s current work makes those post-COVID collaborations more consequential.
In September 2025, Guangzhou Laboratory published an account of a scientific presentation by Shi on the entry pathways and pathogenicity of bat SARS-related coronaviruses.
According to the laboratory, Shi discussed four bat SARS-related coronaviruses that used human ACE2 more efficiently than bat ACE2. Her team also developed organoid-based systems to assess infection and cross-species transmission risk.
The laboratory further reported that researchers conducted experiments in human-ACE2 transgenic mice, finding that bat and pangolin SARS-related coronaviruses could infect the animals and cause lung injury. Guangzhou Laboratory said their pathogenicity was lower than that observed with SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2.
Shi was also the senior contact on a 2025 Cell paper reporting that a bat coronavirus known as HKU5-CoV lineage 2 could use human ACE2 as a cell-entry receptor. The researchers reported infection in human ACE2-expressing cell lines as well as human respiratory and intestinal organoid models.
From Wuhan To Guangzhou
The public debate over American funding of coronavirus research in China has overwhelmingly focused on the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the grants that predated the COVID-19 pandemic.
The newer record raises a different question.
To what extent has this financial relationship continued and - more importantly - did the U.S. government learn anything from COVID-19?
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Wuhan Ping!................
And what role do Fauci supported and initiated programs play in this?
She seems nice.
/s
Put these people in prison already!
They left off the “t” in her first name.
Money from US going to her....
Fool me twice, shame on me.
Sorry. Our prisons are full. Has to be another, lasting manner of ending this. Let me see...
If we don’t charge and convict those making American taxpayers fund this stuff, it will exponentially increase. It won’t matter what laws and regulations say is not permissible within the law. If we don’t arrest those responsible and aiding this stuff, expect much much more.
My brother was an MDPhD viral immunologist at the NIH. He too expressed such predispositions. "I had hope for AIDS..." and the like. It's symptomatic of a cultural rot that started from the inception of the NIH via the world's most powerful predecessor source of grant funding: the Rockefeller Foundation.
One single cruise missile should fix this problem. Deny,deny, deny.
The Malthusian Theory is deeply embedded in globalist ideology and thus into the indoctrination or all educations systems.............
See my post 11.
Wasn’t this the lady who was “silenced” by China after reporting the origin of SARS-Cov-2, at the very beginning?
I thought she was imprisoned or dead, if so.
Shall we assume the New York Times will NOT be covering this story?
> Money from US going to her.... <
The United States is a debtor nation. So we are actually borrowing money, then sending it overseas to her.
Trump is signing these spending bills. I get that he has to balance the good in those bills with the bad. By my goodness, when do we draw the line in the sand?
Never, I guess.
Trump does everything else with the stroke of a pen, why not shut this funding off? Does not seem like it should be very hard. It would make him feel like he accomplished something useful while not making a deal with the Insanians.
Wow, just read it the rest of the way through. She definitely did what she should have by properly crediting the United States for the genesis of COVID and beyond.
That seems professional and appropriate and it shows the world the US AND China made it—not just China or “nature.”
Fauci, you are a turd.
Don’t insult real turds.............😎
“One single cruise missile should fix this problem. Deny,deny, deny.”
Seriously, haven’t we had just about enough of this schit? Do we have to go through the same thing AGAIN????
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