DRASTIC, an international team of scientists and sleuths investigating Covid's origins, found that the lab had an extensive collection of bat coronaviruses - immediately raising concerns about a potential lab leak.
By late 2019, when the pandemic broke out, Shi's team had created a dozen or so "chimeric" viruses - by swapping and stitching ingredients to test which bat coronaviruses could infect humans.
Researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology have found a new bat coronavirus that can enter human cells - and it shares features with the virus that causes Covid.
Lord Matt Ridley, who co-authored the book with Chan, said: "Many of us thought they would probably at least tiptoe away from this kind of research, even while not admitting that it probably caused the pandemic.
The researchers identified hundreds of new bat coronaviruses by catching bats in caves, taking samples from them and then shipping the samples back to Wuhan lab – thousands of miles away.
