Now even ex-boss of China’s CDC says Covid might have leaked from Wuhan lab
Even the former head of China’s top health body has now admitted that a lab leak could have spawned Covid.
Professor George Gao, who headed China’s Center for Disease Control (CDC) when the pandemic began in late 2019, has now described the theory as both “possible” and “logical”.
However, he insisted there was no evidence to support the claim.
Beijing has repeatedly dismissed the lab leak theory, arguing that the virus emerged naturally in a wet market in Wuhan and discrediting any suggestion otherwise.
No concrete evidence has ever been found to support either argument, leading experts to fear the truth will never be discovered.
Former head of China’s Center for Disease Control (CDC), Professor George Gao, has said it’s a ‘possibility’ that Covid emerged from a lab
Professor Gao discussed the never-ending saga at the Pathogens Project Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, acknowledging that Covid may have originated from a lab leak.
“With the origin you have all these conspiracy theories — it was man-made, it was a lab leak, the virus was already adapted to cells,” he said, according to the Daily telegram.
‘Well, it’s possible, it’s logical thinking.
“But where is the evidence, where are the facts?”
He added that since a laboratory leak of SARS in 2004, which led to a series of cases and one fatality, China has taken biosecurity seriously.
‘We value biosecurity because it is so important. We have a lot of national regulations and so many standards,” he said.
Even the admission that a Covid lab leak is possible is a huge departure from Beijing’s official explanation of how the pandemic started.
But this isn’t the first time Professor Gao has been imprisoned and appears to be at odds with his country’s official pandemic narrative.
Earlier this month, he and colleagues published a bombshell paper ruling that there was no evidence to say the virus had jumped from animals to humans in a now-infamous wet market in Wuhan.
While China insists the virus came from elsewhere, academics, politicians and the media have weighed the possibility that it may have leaked from a high-level biochemistry lab in Wuhan.
Some experts are now saying Covid may have originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Here, security personnel stand guard outside the IPH during a WHO visit in 2021
And last week, the Oxford University-trained researcher warned that the true origins of Covid may never be revealed. He called the issue “too sensitive and politicized.”
Professor Gao is vice president of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, a government organization that manages state funding for research in the country.
The departure of the then 60-year-old from the GGD in 2022, officially because of his age, was considered unusual. Chinese officials often remain in post well into their eighties.
He is also considered a close friend of US infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci, who advised former President Donald Trump during the Covid pandemic.
Professor Gao’s comments come a day after another respected researcher at the conference claimed China should have made a Covid vaccine years before the pandemic began.
Researchers in Wuhan, the city where the outbreak started, had samples of a very similar coronavirus called RaTG13, which sickened a group of miners in 2012.
Virologist Professor Gustavo Palacios said this effectively represented a missed opportunity to protect the world from Covid.
It also follows an explosive report from the US Senate that suggested Chinese researchers began work on a Covid jab in mid-November 2019.
This is more than a month before Beijing officially alerted the World Health Organization of a mysterious flu-like outbreak in Wuhan.
It adds to the huge pile of evidence suggesting that President Xi Jinping’s communist regime has tried to cover up the early stages of the pandemic.
The report also concludes that the pandemic most likely resulted from a laboratory leak and was the result of an “investigation-related incident” in Wuhan.
The consensus on how the pandemic began in China three years ago is slowly starting to shift.
While the majority of virologists say the virus is of natural origin, a growing number believe it could be a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Initially, the overwhelming opinion – shared by the world’s leading experts – was that Covid crossed over naturally from animals infected with a bat coronavirus.
China’s secrecy — by not providing vital access to scientists investigating the origins and allegations of covering up evidence from the early days of the pandemic by wiping key databases — has only spawned alternative theories.
However, the truth about how Covid originated will probably never be known.
Other theories about the origins of Covid point to Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market (pictured) as the epicenter of the outbreak. Many of the first cases in December 2019 and January 2020 had visited the site, where live animals were sold
The question of whether the global outbreak started with an overflow of wildlife sold on the market or leaked from the lab in Wuhan, just eight miles across the Yangtze River, has sparked fierce debate. Some studies point to a natural overflow in the Huanan game market. Positive smears from floors, cages and counters also track the virus back to stalls in the southwest corner of the market (bottom left), where animals with the potential to harbor Covid were sold for meat or fur at the time (bottom right)
Who is Professor George Gao? And is he fighting with Beijing?
Professor George Gao led the country’s China Center for Disease Control (DCD) during the early stages of the Covid pandemic.
It’s not the first time Professor Gao has been willing to speak out against Beijing’s official narrative on the pandemic, a stance that may have contributed to his leaving the (CDC).
The 61-year-old, an expert in virology and immunology, has consistently made headlines in recent years.
More recently, this has been about his apparent willingness to detach from Beijing’s official account of the origin of the virus.
He had done research that cast doubt on the idea that Covid could have originated naturally from an animal in Wuhan’s wet market.
And he has also subtly admitted that, while there is no evidence, it is “possible” that Covid originated from a lab leak.
Despite his career, Professor Gao, also known as Gao Fu, originally studied to be a veterinarian before leaving to pursue virology.
He would eventually go on to study biochemistry at Oxford University in 1991 and would later teach there from 2001 and 2004.
Professor Gao would then return to China and work in various public health positions before becoming deputy director of the CDC in 2011.
Prior to Covid, he was best known for helping Chinese health teams in the international effort to contain the spread of Ebola in Sierra Leone in 2014.
He would then become the CDC chief in 2017.
Professor Gao became a common feature of news reports during the original stages of the Covid outbreak, when the eyes of the world were on China.
But in July 2022, when he was 60 years old, it was announced that he would be stepping down due to his age.
This raised some eyebrows, as civil servants in the country often serve in similar positions well into their 80s.
Instead, he took the more junior position of vice president of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, which handles government funding for research in the country.
He has previously called on the US and China to work more closely together on public health issues at a time when tensions between the countries had worsened.
Professor Goa is a globally respected researcher who has authored more than 500 studies on topics such as cross-species flu jumping in birds and bat-derived virus ecology.