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COVID origin: Evidence of lab leak that may have caused coronavirus would have been destroyed by China, ex-MI6 chief says
Initially widely dismissed as conspiracy theories, claims the virus may have escaped from a Wuhan laboratory are gaining traction.
news.sky.com
Evidence of lab leak that may have caused coronavirus would have been destroyed by China, ex-MI6 chief says
Evidence of any lab leak that could be the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic will have been destroyed by Chinese officials, a former MI6 chief has said.
Sir Richard Dearlove, who was in charge of the secret intelligence service between 1999 and 2004, said it would now be difficult to prove the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was working on experiments to make a coronavirus that would be more deadly to humans.
While claims COVID-19 may have accidentally escaped the laboratory were initially widely dismissed as fringe conspiracy theories - with many scientists insisting the virus migrated naturally from animals to humans - they are now gaining traction among more global figures.
Image:Sir Richard Dearlove said he felt some vindication as more people took the lab leak theory seriously
Proponents of the theory point to the fact WIV had been studying coronaviruses in bats for over a decade - and that it is located just a few miles from the Huanan wet market where the first cluster of infections emerged.
Sir Richard said the West had been naive in trusting China, which had infiltrated scientific institutions and journals in the UK and elsewhere.
And he also told The Daily Telegraph's Planet Normal podcast that it was possible Chinese scientists who wanted to speak out about any coronavirus experiments had been "silenced".
"The People's Republic of China is a pretty terrifying regime and does some things we consider unacceptable and extreme in silencing opposition to the official line of the government," he said.