"The Nipah virus is a smaller virus than SARS2 [virus causing COVID-19] and is much less transmissible. But it is one of the deadliest viruses, with a greater-than-60 percent lethality. This is 60-times deadlier than SARS2," Dr. Steven Quay, a Seattle-based physician-scientist, told a Senate subcommittee at a hearing on Aug. 3. Quay, who was previously on the faculty of Stanford University's School of Medicine for about a decade, further said the work on Nipah at the Wuhan lab was not conducted at biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) facilities, which have the highest level of biosafety, but rather at BSL-2 or -3 facilities with lower safety protocols.