A United Nations (UN) inquiry is the only way of getting to the bottom of whether Covid emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, leading experts have said.
One Cambridge University academic and No10 adviser said the theory has not been ‘adequately explored’, while a respected Harvard epidemiologist said the belief the virus escaped from a secure facility was no longer a ‘fringe position’.
The WHO has already sent a team to the Chinese city, the ground zero of the Covid pandemic, but was not given full access to early records, so the theory has yet to be properly scrutinised.
US President Joe Biden this week ordered intelligence agencies to launch a probe into whether it was man-made after all. But China immediately hit back and called the suggestion a ‘conspiracy’.
Today a British scientist said he feels vindicated that the theory the coronavirus may have escaped from a lab is now being considered seriously.
Angus Dalgleish, 71, a vaccine researcher and professor of oncology at St George’s Hospital, last year struggled to find a publisher for his paper suggesting the virus’s spike protein contains artificially inserted sequences.
He said the research was shunned by the scientific community, who did not want to threaten China or be seen to be agreeing with President Donald Trump — who was a big advocate for the theory the virus was leaked from a lab at the time.
Professor David Relman (left), a microbiologist at Stanford University, said the theory that coronavirus originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab needs to be investigated by an international consortium of scientists in collaboration with the UN. Angus Dalgleish, 71, a vaccine researcher and professor of oncology at St George’s Hospital, said he feels vindicated that the suggestion is now being considered seriously
A UN inquiry is the only way of getting to the bottom of whether Covid emerged from a lab in Wuhan, experts have said. Pictured: The Wuhan Institute of Virology in China
The oncologist said: ‘The changes required to infect humans are extremely unlikely to have occurred naturally.’
Professor Dalgleish — who ran for Parliament as a UKIP candidate in 2015 — said the President’s use of the terms ‘Wuhan flu’ and ‘China virus’ damaged scientific debate on the subject.
He told The Times: ‘I was basically ostracised. I was fearful — really frightened by the way I was being treated. I was told I was not an expert on coronaviruses and I should just shut up.
‘We couldn’t believe people with whom we’d collaborated and published papers with in the past would shun us — I was warned I was out of my depth and I shouldn’t get into this and I’d make a fool of myself.’
The theory the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology was originally dismissed by left-leaning media outlets last year as a conspiracy theory after it was mentioned by Mr Trump.
But they have now changed course with the launch of the US investigation.
Liberal US outlets, who slammed Mr Trump when he said a year ago said he had ‘a high degree of confidence’ that the virus escaped from a lab, have finally conceded that he may have been right — after a year ridiculing the suggestion.
It comes after Facebook yesterday the reversed its ban on its users discussing the theory, just hours after President Biden announced the probe.
The tech giant ruled in February it would ‘remove’ any posts that claimed that coronavirus was ‘man-made’ or that the virus was ‘created by an individual, government or country’ — branding it ‘misinformation’ and a ‘debunked claim’ that required ‘aggressive action’ from moderators.
The lab-leak theory was bolstered this week after it was revealed three workers at the Wuhan lab were hospitalised in November, 2019, months before Covid was first discovered in China.
China claims the virus was transmitted to humans from an animal host, with bats and pangolins both named as potential sources. Many scientists agree that is the most likely theory.
Today, professor of clinical microbiology at the University of Cambridge Ravi Gupta, a member of Nervtag, said the theory has not yet been investigated with ‘scientific rigour’.
He told The Telegraph: ‘The possibility was not adequately explored due to lack of access to primary records by the WHO group. Lab leak has not been scientifically rejected as a cause using [the] scientific rigour that one would expect.’
A soon to be published report by a team of British and Norwegian experts suggests it is possible to trace the creation of the virus to research in China that began in 2008.
Professor David Relman, a microbiologist at Stanford University, said the theory needs to be investigated by an international consortium of scientists in collaboration with the UN.
He said: ‘Ideally, an investigation would rely on an international consortium of scientists under the auspices of many national academies of science working in partnership, in collaboration with an international governance entity, the UN Secretary General’s Office, or something of that sort.’
And Harvard epidemiologist Professor Marc Lipsitch said a lab escape scenario ‘remains plausible enough that it should be looked into rigorously’.
He told the paper: ‘This is not a fringe position, given that multiple European governments and Dr Tedros have said the same.’
He said that while scientists are not saying a lab origin is more likely than a natural one, a thorough investigation is needed to reveal the cause of the pandemic.
President Biden’s top epidemiologist Dr Anthony Fauci has also u-turned about where the virus may have originated this week, saying ‘you never know’.
Last year he insisted there was ‘no evidence’ to point to coronavirus having been manufactured when Trump raised it as a possibility.
America is looking at the theory seriously, leading to China hitting out at the ‘dark history’ of the US intelligence community after President Biden’s probe was announced.
Lijian Zhao, foreign ministry spokesman who has been Beijing’s point-man in trying to pin blame for the pandemic outside the country’s borders, accused the US of trying to shift blame away from its own high Covid case and death counts – and suggested security services may be involved in a cover-up.
Meanwhile Hu Xijin, editor of the state mouthpiece Global Times newspaper, accused Biden of trying to discredit a WHO investigation which concluded that a lab leak is ‘unlikely’ — although critics have previously blasted that report as a China-centric whitewash.
China’s American embassy also hit out, accusing Biden and his security services of being ‘fixated on political manipulation and (the) blame game’ in a statement on its website.
No10 officials have called for investigators to probe all theories as to how the Covid pandemic began.
Dominic Cummings this week revealed the PM held meetings when the crisis first began to discuss whether it had ‘escaped’ from a laboratory and whether the disease had been ‘engineered’.
China’s official Covid timeline vs Evidence the disease was spreading earlier
Official timeline
Dec 8, 2019 – Earliest date that China has acknowledged an infection
Dec 31 – China first reported ‘pneumonia of unknown cause’ to the World Health Organisation
Jan 1, 2020 – Wuhan seafood market closed for disinfection
Jan 11 – China reported its first death
Jan 23 – Wuhan locked down
Jan 31 – WHO declared ‘outbreak of international concern’ as China admitted having thousands of cases
Feb 23 – Italy reports cluster of cases in first major outbreak in the West
Chinese scientists and officials have been keen to point the finger of blame outside their own borders – variously suggesting that the virus could have originated in Bangladesh, the US, Greece, Australia, India, Italy, Czech Republic, Russia or Serbia
New evidence
Sep 2019– Blood samples are taken in a lung cancer screening trial in Italy which later test positive for coronavirus
Oct-Dec – Rise in ‘flu and pneumonia’ cases in northern Italy which could be linked to coronavirus
Nov – Sewage samples taken in Florianópolis, Brazil, suggest virus was present
Nov 10 – Milanese woman has a skin biopsy, producing a sample which later shows signs of the virus
Nov 17 – Leaked documents suggest case detected in China on this date
Dec 1 – Chinese researchers report an infection on this date in a peer-reviewed study, but it has not been acknowledged by Beijing
Dec 18 – Sewage samples taken in Milan and Turin suggest virus was circulating in the cities
Jan 2020 – Sewage samples from Barcelona suggest virus was in the city
Multiple countries have uncovered evidence that the virus was circulating months earlier than originally thought. While Beijing has tried to insist this proves the virus originated elsewhere, most scientists still think China was the origin – raising the prospect that communist officials simply hid evidence of the early spread