The UK government downplayed the “high probability” that Covid-19 emerged from a laboratory leak in China due to 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 United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
But the “lab leak” theory was downplayed in Britain due to resistance from government scientists who favored the idea that Covid “jumped the species barrier” from animals to humans, according to US sources.
The January 2021 phone call included Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump’s secretary of state, and then-UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab and their counterparts.
It is claimed that the call, previously reported by The Mail on Sunday, was “open”, meaning not encrypted, in the hope that the Chinese government would intercept the call.
US officials shared their views on the origin of the virus in a call with other members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
The January 2021 phone call included Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump’s secretary of state, and then-UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab (pictured) and their counterparts.
The allegations, made by unnamed officials speaking to The Sunday Telegraph yesterday, are likely to increase calls to open the Covid inquiry to the question of where the virus originated.
An American source who worked on intelligence said: ‘We saw several pieces of information and thought they were astonishing.
“They obviously pointed out the high probability that it was a lab leak.”
An intelligence dossier revealed that the Chinese military worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the years before the pandemic, and some laboratory researchers fell ill shortly before the virus was first recorded nearby.
Other revelations showed that Chinese scientists carried out “gain-of-function” research, whereby a virus is genetically manipulated to show different behavior, such as becoming more infectious or becoming 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 we have received is that it does not appear that this disease of zoonotic origin came from a laboratory.” . .’
Two former officials said the evidence was not taken seriously because ministers viewed the lab leak allegations as a “radioactive American political issue” that was discredited by public disagreement between government scientists and Trump.
One official said: ‘Once the thing became fundamentally political, the ability to pursue it internationally really collapsed because no one else was interested in touching it.
“I think (Five Eyes) were a little upset by the way the issue had been handled in American politics.”
The two sources cited by The Sunday Telegraph 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.
The UK government, including Boris Johnson (pictured in 2022), initially rejected the claim that Covid had been created by scientists.
Sir Jeremy and 26 other scientists rejected the lab leak theory in February 2020, signing a statement saying: “We join together to condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin.”
While many scientific experts say that animal-human interaction is the most likely cause of the first infection, some figures, notably Michael Gove, say the virus was “man-made.”
Gove told the Covid Inquiry in November that there was a “significant body of opinion that believes the virus itself was man-made, and that presents its own set of challenges”.
Both the FBI and the US Department of Energy have said they believe a laboratory leak is the most likely cause of the illness. UK ministers face calls to expand the Covid inquiry to include an investigation into the origins.
A UK Government spokesperson said: “There are questions that need to be answered about the origin of Covid-19, among other things so we can ensure we are better prepared for future pandemics.
‘The UK supports the World Health Organization in its origins study. “It is important that China and other countries cooperate fully.”