Via The Guardian: Five Eyes network contradicts theory Covid-19 leaked from lab. Excerpt:
There is no current evidence to suggest that coronavirus leaked from a Chinese research laboratory, intelligence sources have told the Guardian, contradicting recent White House claims that there is growing proof this is how the pandemic began.
The sources also insisted that a “15-page dossier” highlighted by the Australian Daily Telegraph which accused China of a deadly cover up was not culled from intelligence from the Five Eyes network, an alliance between the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
British and other Five Eyes agencies do believe that Beijing has not necessarily been open about how coronavirus initially spread in Wuhan at the turn of the year. But they are nervous about getting involved in an escalating international situation.
On Sunday Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, said: “I can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan.”
No evidence was offered by Pompeo to back up his assertion but information has been circulating over the last month in the UK, US and Australia aimed at raising questions about the high security Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has long specialised in researching coronaviruses in horseshoe bats.
Stories have suggested that workers in the lab may not have always used full protective equipment, and that in one instance a bat urinated on a researcher who did not subsequently become ill.
But there is nothing to indicate a leak from the lab could have caused the pandemic, sources say.
Claims are even made that the virus was genetically engineered in Wuhan, although there is both scientific and intelligence agency agreement that there is no evidence for this.
