Coronavirus world: Covid-19 'may have leaked from Wuhan research lab' – Metro.co.uk, Metro.co.uk

Ministers fear that coronavirus may have originated in a Chinese research lab and not a wet market in Wuhan, as widely suspected.

According to the Mail on Sunday , senior government sources are entertaining the possibility that Covid – 19 may have leaked from a research facility in the Chinese epicentre instead.

‘The balance of scientific advice’ means the live animal market remains the most likely scenario for the outbreak of coronavirus, the sources said, but the idea that it may have leaked from a research laboratory is’ no longer being discounted ‘.

According to a member of COBRA – the government’s emergency committee – the latest evidence does not not rule out the possibility of a leak.

‘There is a credible alternative view [to the theory it came from contact with animals] based on the nature of the virus,’ the COBRA source said.

‘Perhaps it is no coincidence that there is that laboratory in Wuhan. It is not discounted. ’

The Institute of Virology, described as the most advanced laboratory of its type on the Chinese mainland, is situated in Wuhan and just ten miles from the market thought to be at the center of the coronavirus crisis.

The state-run People’s Daily newspaper reported in 2020 that the Institute – one of the most secure virology units in the world – was ‘capable of conducting experiments with highly pathogenic microorganisms’ such as the Ebola virus.

In , a leak from a Chinese laboratory led to the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which killed one person and infected nine others.

The Chinese government said at the time that the leak was down to negligence and punished five senior officials at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

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