Covid 'likely came from China lab and there was obviously a cover-up'

Covid most likely came from a lab leak in China and its origins were 'obviously' the subject of a cover-up by Beijing, a top British epidemiologist has said.

Professor Tim Spector, who co-created the Zoe symptom tracker app and was given an OBE for his work during the pandemic response, questioned whether the virus could have been manipulated by scientists before it was allegedly leaked.

'I don't think there's any doubt that this virus emanated in China, in a place near Wuhan,' The King's College London epidemiology professor told the Zoe podcast.

'The question is, did this come from bats? Did it come from a lab that was working on this virus and manipulating it to make it grow faster? Or was it a totally artificially generated virus to?'

Covid-19 emerged in Wuhan, central China, with differing theories among scientists over whether it could have come from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) or a wet market in the region.

Debate has raged about the source of the pandemic that claimed 7 million lives globally and more than 200,000 in the UK. 

The theory that it was a lab leak gained traction after being shared by the chief of the FBI, who stated last year that the origins of the pandemic 'are most likely a potential lab incident'.

Professor Spector said that Covid has proven that labs across the world should be more strictly monitored and be treated with the same seriousness as a nuclear threat, warning that it 'could happen again in another lab if we’re not careful.'

He also highlighted claims at US congressional hearings that Chinese and American labs had worked together to study the infectiousness of coronaviruses and how to 'control or speed them up'.

Describing a potential cover-up, he pointed to 'the trail of shredded documents and email exchange between the US and China at the time.'

He added that 'there was a very obvious cover-up very early on by various governments saying we have to get a report out there saying this is all down to bats so people aren't going to blame labs and scientists to keep that credibility going.'

'I don't think the idea that someone built a virus from scratch would be very easy to do. So I think it's more likely that was a mistake rather than anything deliberate, but I think these were people working with hazardous viruses that got out of control rather than it being a plot,' he said.' 

The pandemic government adviser described it as his 'personal view' and added that 'there are views on all sides of this.'

In September, a major international study rejected the popular theory, stating instead that the virus began life in a 'wet market' in Wuhan rather than in a scientific experiment.

Researchers tested genetic samples of animals that were sold in Wuhan market stalls in 2019 and found traces of the Covid virus in some species.

They claimed to have pinpointed animals that may have been responsible for its transmission to humans.

'This adds another layer to the accumulating evidence that all points to the same scenario: that infected animals were introduced into the market in mid-to late November 2019, which sparked the pandemic,' said author of the study Kristian Andersen from Scripps Research.

The raccoon dog, a fox-like animal common in East Asia, was suggested to be the biggest carrier of the virus.

Other animals such as masked palm civets, hoary bamboo rats and Malayan porcupines were also found to be carrying Covid-19 before it spread to humans.

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This is not a definitive list as many of the key animal species were cleared out from the market before the Chinese health team arrived, said Florence Débarre of the French National Centre for Scientific Research, who led the study.

The scientists note that many of the early cases in Wuhan, a city of 12 million people, were workers from the market.

However, supporters of the lab leak theory have been backed up by the findings of Australian and American researchers who used a risk analysis tool to determine the chances the SARS-CoV-2 virus was of 'unnatural' or 'natural' origin. 

It found that Covid had a strong likelihood of being of 'unnatural' origin, though the researchers caveated this by saying that the 'risk assessment cannot prove the origin of [Covid], but shows that the possibility of a laboratory origin cannot be easily dismissed.'

It has also emerged that American and Chinese scientists sought to create a Covid-like virus just a year before the pandemic began.

Records - obtained by freedom of information requests in December 2023 - laid out a plan to 'engineer spike proteins' to infect human cells that would then be 'inserted into SARS-Covid backbones' at WIV in December 2018.

The proposal was made by the EcoHealth Alliance, a New York nonprofit that channels US government grants abroad to fund these types of experiments.

Ultimately, the application was denied by the US Department of Defense, but critics say the plans laid out in the proposal served as a 'blueprint' for how to create Covid.

Talking about the implications of the study, Australian biosecurity expert Dr Raina MacIntyre told Daily Mail Australia: 'For policy, this [study] matters because we have more control over prevention of unnatural outbreaks, many of which arise from simple human error or inadequate biosafety.

'Poor biosafety procedures in bat sampling and at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were documented but lab accidents are common all over the world.'