Q: Has there ever been a lab-engineered coronavirus from bats?

A: Yes. On November 12, 2015, the highly-respected scientific journal Nature published an article about one. In the explanatory note, researchers stated: “An experiment that created a hybrid version of a bat coronavirus — one related to the virus that causes SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) — has triggered renewed debate over whether engineering lab variants of viruses with possible pandemic potential is worth the risks.” Then in 2016, Ralph Baric and colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill showed that the same bat virus could infect live mice that had been engineered to express the human gene for the ACE2 receptor. The virus was “poised for human emergence,” as the title of Dr. Baric’s paper put it.

Q: Maye the lab was created there and bats were studied there in the first place because the general area was known to already have virus-carrying animals like bats?

A: I'm afraid not. The bats used in the WIV experiments were mainly from Yunnan province, over 1000kms away from Wuhan.