According to Germany’s foreign intelligence service in 2020, there was an 80% to 95% possibility that the coronavirus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic was unintentionally released from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. Two German newspapers published the shocking revelation on 12th March. The disclosure was not made public then.
German spy agency BND had suspicions that the institute had carried out gain-of-function studies, in which viruses are altered to make them more contagious to people for scientific purposes, according to a joint investigation published by the magazines Die Zeit and Sueddeutscher Zeitung. Both the then-chancellor, Angela Merkel, and her successor, Olaf Scholz, however, ignored the findings, much like other Western leaders.
According to the papers, it also showed signs of multiple safety rule violations at the facility. An unidentified intelligence operation known as “Saaremaa” and publicly accessible data served as the foundation for the spy agency’s conclusion. The report stated that although the probe had been commissioned by the office of Angela Merkel, it had never been released. However, the assessment was communicated with the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the fall of 2024, per the details.
The CIA has determined that the COVID-19 epidemic is more likely to have originated in a laboratory than in the wild, based on a spokeswoman in January. At the time, the agency stated that both the lab origin and the natural origin hypotheses remained conceivable, and it had “low confidence” in its assessment. According to media reports, some of the material was from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is situated in the Chinese city Wuhan, where the pandemic is reported to have begun. It pointed to the usage of some dangerous research techniques there as well.
The reports asserted that there was proof that Wuhan researchers had conducted “gain-of-function experiments,” which involve manipulating naturally existing viruses. Such studies have the potential to alter how a virus spreads, how it produces disease and what kinds of hosts it can infect.
China’s government claimed to have participated in and supported studies aimed at identifying the origin of COVID-19 and has charged Washington with politicizing the issue, particularly in light of investigation efforts of the US agencies. Beijing has stated that allegations that the epidemic was most likely sparked by a laboratory leak are unfounded. Last month, China’s foreign ministry declared that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was not engaged in the development or spread of the COVID-19 virus and that it never conducted any gain-of-function research on coronaviruses.
Ever since the coronavirus outbreak flared up in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, the ground zero of the pandemic that later swept across the world, scientists have been debating about the origins of the contagion, with the virus being leaked from a lab being one of the most widely believed hypothesis. Many had suspected that the virus was leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China where researches on the virus are regularly conducted.
But the clamour surrounding the leak of the virus from Wuhan was quelled after 27 scientists in the Lancet rejected the theory as baseless and insisted that the virus originated through conventional means. A letter written by the 27 scientists published by “The Lancet” in February 2020 had said that they “strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” and had claimed that scientists from multiple countries “overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife.”
However, a probe carried out by “The Telegraph” in 2021 has revealed that 26 out of 27 scientists who wrote a letter in the Lancet medical journal trashing the lab-leak theory of the COVID-19 outbreak have or had links to researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.
According to reports, experts in the United Kingdom aided in shutting down covid lab leak theory back in 2020. The article “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,” published in “Nature Medicine” in March 2020, stated that the pandemic was triggered by a natural breakout event, and was crucial in dampening debate about the virus’s origins. However, declassified emails from early 2020 show that the authors engaged in long talks with specialists, including Sir Patrick Vallance and Sir Jeremy Farrar, the head of the “Wellcome Trust,” in the weeks before publication. Experts were cautioned in those email conversations that the odd traits identified in Covid-19 may have developed in both lab or wild animals.
They were also cautioned that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) had been doing research on bat coronaviruses at risky biosafety levels. However, by the time the article was published, all mention of Wuhan’s biosecurity issues had been omitted and the authors contended that lab proliferation of the virus was doubtful.
The United States Energy Department, in its 2023 classified intelligence report, has concluded that the Covid pandemic most likely originated from a laboratory leak. The report was submitted to the White House and key members of Congress. Notably, earlier, the Energy Department report by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines’ office in 2021 had said the virus’ origin was inconclusive.
WSJ quoted unnamed people who have read the report. One of the unnamed US Intelligence officials told WSJ that the update was done in the light of new intelligence, further study of academic literature and consultation with non-government experts. Earlier, the FBI stated in its report with “moderate confidence” that Covid-19 resulted from a lab leak in 2021. The agency held its position in this report.
The US Congress report declared that the coronavirus “most likely” originated in a laboratory in Wuhan. It was released in December 2024 by a US House of Representatives committee that had spent two years looking into the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects in the US.
