Three years after the MoS revealed fears that Covid had been leaked the world ... trends now
It was in early April 2020, at the start of the first national lockdown, when The Mail on Sunday became the first mainstream media outlet in the world to reveal fears that the virus had leaked from a Chinese laboratory. A member of Cobra, the Government’s secret emergency committee, told us that Ministers were studying intelligence about an accident at Wuhan’s Institute of Virology as ‘a credible alternative view’ to the idea that it was first passed to humans at an animal market in the city.
Scientists at the institute were carrying out high-risk experiments to manipulate coronaviruses, sampled from bats in caves nearly 1,000 miles away, to make them more transmissible. The source said: ‘Perhaps it is no coincidence that there is that laboratory in Wuhan.’
Perhaps indeed. The story made headlines around the world, but the silence from the British political and scientific establishment was deafening. Rather than risk accusing Beijing of culpability for one of the most devastating pandemics in history – the world death toll is now placed conservatively at seven million – the official line remained that the virus had been passed on ‘zoonotically’ at the wet market, despite DNA analysis of Covid-19 tracing it to bats found only in those distant caves.
Sceptics conflated the thesis with the notion that China had deliberately released the virus as the by-product of a weapons programme – something this newspaper had never claimed – and branded it a ‘conspiracy theory’.
Last week, nearly three years after our first report, FBI director Christopher Wray declared that the bureau believed that Covid ‘most likely’ originated in a Chinese government-controlled lab. This was the first public confirmation of the FBI’s classified judgment of how the virus had emerged.
It was in early April 2020, at the start of the first national lockdown, when The Mail on Sunday became the first mainstream media outlet in the world to reveal fears that the virus had leaked from a Chinese laboratory. Pictured: Scientists testing bats in Wuhan
So why did it take so long for the theory to gain wide acceptance?
The controversial role played by the World Health Organisation (WHO) was key. In tandem with our coverage of the scientific evidence pointing to a leak, investigative journalist Ian Birrell led the way in exposing the disturbing links between China and the WHO’s supine director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Despite months of stonewalling and obstruction by Beijing at the start of the outbreak, Dr Tedros went out of his way to praise President Xi Jinping’s ‘very rare leadership’ and China’s ‘transparency’.
Ultimately, Tedros was forced to backtrack on an early WHO judgment which ruled out a leak and he now says publicly that ‘all options are on the table’. Privately, he is understood to have admitted that a leak is the most likely explanation.
Birrell also forensically picked apart the undeclared interests of the scientists who banded together to rule out a ‘laboratory-based scenario’ without offering any plausible alternative theory.
He revealed that an article in esteemed medical journal The Lancet which denied any possibility of a lab leak had been orchestrated by Peter Daszak, a researcher who had worked with the Wuhan institute.
The Lancet’s astonishing ‘statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals and medical professionals of China’ attacked what they described as
