This is what the original patent application looked like. Here. So as of 2017 there was still no mentioning of COVID.
In September 2020 an addendum was added to the patent application to include Covid 19. Here.
That was 18 months after the pandemic had been declared.
The article linked in the OP even has this 2020 date on it but insists that it was 2015, but let’s face it, facts are irrelevant to the tin foil hat brigade. How stupid do you have to be to believe this shit? See here.