[3][4] Located in Jiangxia District, Wuhan, Hubei, it was founded in 1956 and opened mainland China's first biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory[5] in 2018.

[13] The highest level biosafety installation is necessary because the institute investigates highly dangerous viruses, such as SARS, influenza H5N1, Japanese encephalitis, and dengue.

[12] Scientists such as U.S. molecular biologist Richard H. Ebright, who had expressed concern of previous escapes of the SARS virus at Chinese laboratories in Beijing and had been troubled by the pace and scale of China's plans for expansion into BSL-4 laboratories,[5] called the institute a "world-class research institution that does world-class research in virology and immunology" while he noted that the WIV is a world leader in the study of bat coronaviruses.

[20] In 2015, an international team including two scientists from the institute published successful research on whether a bat coronavirus could be made to infect a human cell line (HeLa).

The team, who spent five years sampling the bats in the cave, noted the presence of a village only a kilometer away, and warned of "the risk of spillover into people and emergence of a disease similar to SARS".

[20][22] In 2018, another paper by a team from the institute reported the results of a serological study of a sample of villagers residing near these bat caves (near Xiyang Township 夕阳乡 in Jinning District of Yunnan).

In February 2020, a team led by Shi Zhengli at the institute were the first to identify, analyze and name the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), upload it to public databases for scientists around the world to understand,[27][28][29] and publish papers in Nature.

[33] The WIV said it would not exercise its new Chinese patent rights "if relevant foreign companies intend to contribute to the prevention and control of China's epidemic.

[35][36] New York-based, NIH–funded EcoHealth Alliance has been the subject of controversy and increased scrutiny due to its ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

[46] There have been allegations that the initial outbreak was provoked by either manipulation or accidental release of a virus held in the WIV facilities, and that the participants may have conspired to cover it up.