Covid WAS ‘clearly’ a Chinese lab leak covered up by Beijing, a British expert says

Covid most likely emerged from a laboratory leak in China and its origins were “clearly” 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 awarded 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 originated in China, in a place near Wuhan,” the King’s College London epidemiology professor told the Zoe podcast.

‘The question is: does this come from bats? Did it come from a lab that worked on this virus and manipulated it to make it grow faster? Or was it a completely artificially generated virus?’

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

Debate rages over the source of the pandemic, which has claimed seven million lives worldwide and more than 200,000 in Britain.

The theory that it was a laboratory leak gained traction after it was shared by the head of the FBI, who stated last year that the origin of the pandemic “is most likely a potential laboratory incident.”

Professor Spector said Covid has proven that laboratories around the world need to be more closely monitored and treated with the same seriousness as a nuclear threat, warning that it could “happen again in another laboratory if we are not careful.”

Professor Tim Spector co-founded the Zoe symptom tracker app and was awarded an OBE for supporting the pandemic response with his work

He also emphasized during US congressional hearings that Chinese and US laboratories had worked together to study the contagiousness of coronaviruses and how to “achieve their control or acceleration.”

He described a possible cover-up and pointed to “the trail of shredded documents and email exchanges between the US and China at the time.”

He added that “there was a clear cover-up very early on by various governments saying we need to put out a report saying this is all due to bats so people won’t blame labs and scientists for that credibility to maintain. .’

‘I don’t think the idea that someone built a virus from scratch would be very easy. “So I think it’s more likely that it was a mistake than it was something deliberate, but I think these were people working with dangerous viruses that spiraled out of control, rather than it being a conspiracy,” he said. ‘

The pandemic government adviser described it as his “personal view,” adding that “there are views on all sides.”

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

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

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

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

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

It has been suggested that the raccoon dog, a fox-like animal common in East Asia, is the main carrier of the virus.

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

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

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

However, proponents of the laboratory leak theory are supported by the findings of Australian and American researchers who used a risk assessment tool to determine the likelihood that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was of ‘unnatural’ or ‘natural’ origin.

It found that Covid was likely to be of ‘unnatural’ origin, although the researchers undermined this by saying the ‘risk assessment cannot prove the origin of (Covid) but shows that the possibility of a laboratory origin cannot be easily are rejected. .’

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

Data – obtained through Freedom of Information requests in December 2023 – included a plan to “engineer spike proteins” to infect human cells that would then be “inserted into SARS-Covid backbones” at WIV in December 2018.

This photo taken on April 15, 2020, shows vendors wearing face masks as they offer shrimp for sale at the Wuhan Baishazhou Market in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei province

The proposal was made by the EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based nonprofit that channels U.S. government subsidies abroad to fund these types of experiments.

Ultimately, the application was rejected by the US Department of Defense, but critics say the plans in the proposal served as a ‘blueprint’ for creating Covid.

Speaking about the implications of the research, Australian biosafety expert Dr Raina MacIntyre told Daily Mail Australia: ‘Policically this (study) is important because we have more control over the prevention of unnatural outbreaks, many of which result from simple human error or inadequate biosecurity. .

‘Poor biosafety procedures at bat sampling and at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were documented, but laboratory accidents are common around the world.’