Beijing's secret Covid lab leak probe trends now
Chinese authorities secretly investigated a lab at the heart of the row over Covid's origin after the pandemic began, an ex-insider sensationally revealed today.
President Xi Jinping's communist administration has repeatedly denied the lab leak hypothesis throughout the pandemic, labelling it a smear campaign by 'anti-China' forces and insisting the virus emerged naturally in the city of Wuhan.
Yet Beijing considered the theory credible enough to instigate its own formal probe, according to the former chief of the country's own CDC.
Professor George Gao, who ran the organisation when the pandemic began towards the end of 2019, claimed the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was 'double-checked' by Government-backed experts.
The BBC says Professor Gao's explosive revelation — shared with them — is the first acknowledgement of any internal inquiry taking place over the lab leak theory.
Former head of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control (CDC) Professor George Gao said a lab leak origin for Covid cannot be ruled out as he revealed for the first time that officials from Beijing conducted a formal investigation at the Wuhan Institute of Virology shortly after the start of the pandemic
While China has insisted the virus originated elsewhere, academics, politicians and the media have contemplated the possibility it leaked from a high-level biochemical lab in Wuhan - raising suspicions that Chinese officials simply hid evidence of the early spread
Discussing the possibility himself in a new podcast aimed to exploring the origins of the virus, he said: 'You can always suspect anything. That's science.
'Don't rule out anything.'
At first, the overwhelming opinion, shared by the world's leading experts, was that Covid crossed naturally from animals infected with a bat coronavirus.
But consensus over how the pandemic began three years ago has slowly started to shift.
The lab leak theory centres around the fact that the virus first emerged miles away from the WIV, where researchers were known to be working on coronaviruses found in bats.
No concrete proof to support either argument has ever been found, leaving experts fearing the truth will never be uncovered.
Professor Gao told Fever: The Hunt for Covid’s Origin that a formal investigation was carried out into the WIV after the start of the pandemic, although he did not specify when.
'That lab was double-checked by the experts in the field,' said the world-renowned immunologist and virologist.
Professor Goa admitted he hadn't seen the official result of the probe — but added he had 'heard' the lab was given the all-clear.
'I think the conclusion is that they are following all the protocols. They haven't found [any] wrongdoing,' he said.
In response to Professor Goa's comments, China's UK Embassy said: 'The so-called "lab leak" is a lie created by anti-China forces. It is politically motivated and has no scientific basis.'
This isn't the first time that Professor Gao has pushed past China's official narrative of the pandemic.
Last month, he told a conference in Switzerland that, while he had seen no evidence to back it up, a lab leak origin for Covid was possible.
The Oxford University-educated researcher has also warned that the true origins of Covid may never be revealed due to the issue being 'too sensitive and politicised'.
And in April he, alongside colleagues, published a bombshell paper that ruled there was no proof the virus jumped from animals to humans at a now-infamous Wuhan wet market.
Professor Goa is now vice president of the government's National Natural Science Foundation of China after stepping down from the CDC last year.
Some experts now say Covid may have emerged from within the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Here security personnel are pictured keeping watch outside the WIV during a visit by the WHO in 2021
His retirement from the organisation in 2022, officially stated as being due to his age, was considered unusual. Chinese officials often stay in post well into their 80s.
Once dismissed as fringe hypothesis favoured by conspiracy theorists, the possibility of Covid accidentally spreading from a lab has gained increasing traction over the course of the pandemic.
Even US intelligence officials have backed it, with FBI Director Christopher Wray stating in February that the virus 'most likely' originated from a lab incident in Wuhan.
However, most experts maintain that Covid most likely emerged naturally, being transmitted from animals to humans.
Called zoonosis, such theories have largely pointed to Wuhan Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where live animals of numerous species were kept and sold, as the potential site where such an infection could have taken place.
But Professor Gao, a previous critic of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market theory, has said because the search for early Covid cases in January 2020 was so heavily focused on this market and hospitals near it, officials may have missed a possible source of the virus on the other side of the city.
In February 2021, an investigation into Covid’s origin by the
