Britain downplayed ‘gobsmacking’ Covid lab leak information
US shared intelligence that pointed finger at China
THE UK Government downplayed the ‘high likelihood’ that Covid-19 emerged from a lab leak in China because of resistance from scientific advisers, it was claimed yesterday.
US officials shared their views on the origin of the virus in a call with other members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance – the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
But the ‘lab leak’ theory was downplayed in Britain because of resistance from government scientists who favoured the idea that Covid ‘jumped the species barrier’ from animals to humans, according to US sources.
Taking part in the January 2021 phone call were Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump’s secretary of state, and the UK’s then foreign secretary Dominic Raab and their counterparts.
The call – previously reported by The Mail on Sunday – was ‘open’, meaning unencrypted, in the hope the Chinese government would intercept the call, it is claimed.
The allegations, made by unnamed officials speaking in The Sunday Telegraph yesterday, are likely to increase calls to open the Covid Inquiry to the question of where the virus originated.
One US source who worked on the intelligence said: ‘We saw several pieces of information and thought they were gobsmacking.
‘They obviously pointed to the high likelihood that this was indeed a lab leak.’
An intelligence dossier revealed the Chinese military worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the years leading up to the pandemic, and some lab researchers fell sick shortly before the virus was first recorded nearby.
Other revelations showed Chinese scientists carried out ‘gain of function’ research, whereby a virus is genetically manipulated to show different behaviour, such as becoming more infectious, or to become infectious against different species.
The UK Government, including Boris Johnson, initially rejected the claim that Covid had been created by scientists, saying in June 2021: ‘The advice that we have had is that it doesn’t look as though this disease of zoonotic origin came from a lab.’
Two former officials said the evidence was not taken seriously because ministers saw lab leak claims as a ‘radioactive American political issue’ that was discredited by public disagreement between government scientists and Mr Trump.
One official said: ‘ Once the thing became fundamentally political, the ability to pursue it internationally really just collapsed because no one else was interested in touching it.
‘I think [Five Eyes] were kind of annoyed by the way the issue had become treated in US politics.’
The two sources cited by The Sunday Telegraph both separately named Sir Jeremy Farrar, then a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, as a key opponent of the lab leak theory in the UK Government.
Sir Jeremy and 26 other scientists rejected the lab leak theory in February 2020, signing a statement which said: ‘ We stand together to condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin.’
While many scientific experts say an animal-to-human interaction is the most likely cause of the first infection, some figures, most notably Michael Gove, say the virus was ‘man-made’.
Mr Gove told the Covid Inquiry in November there was a ‘significant body of judgement that believes that the virus itself was man-made – and that presents its own set of challenges’.
Both the FBI and US Department of Energy have said they believe a lab leak is the most likely cause of the disease. UK ministers are facing calls to widen the Covid Inquiry to include an investigation into the origins.
A UK Government spokesman said: ‘There are questions that need to be answered about the origin of Covid-19, not least so we can ensure we are better prepared for future pandemics. The UK supports the World Health Organisation in its study of the origins. It is important China and other countries co-operate fully.’