Scientist sickened at Wuhan lab early in coronavirus pandemic was US-funded

A Chinese scientist partially funded by U.S. grants who was working in Wuhan was one of three researchers who fell sick with a mystery illness early on in the coronavirus pandemic, a former U.S. official confirmed Tuesday. 

Ben Hu had been working at the Wuhan Institute of Virology when he and the other two scientists were sickened with an unspecified illness in late 2019, potentially lending credibility to the theory that the pandemic could have originated from a lab leak rather than from a wild animal market in Wuhan. 

Hu had been researching coronaviruses at the lab when he became sick with a disease that mirrored the symptoms of COVID-19, U.S. intelligence reports said, the Wall Street Journal first reported.