U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi cautioned Britain on Friday that there could be no post-Brexit trade deal with the United States if the Northern Ireland peace agreement was destroyed.
The United States has expressed grave concern that a row between London and Brussels over the implementation of the 2020 Brexit treaty could undermine the Good Friday accord, which effectively ended three decades of violence.
“If there is destruction of the Good Friday accords, they [are] very unlikely to have a UK-U.S. bilateral,” she told a Chatham House event.
Since the United Kingdom left the European Union on Jan. 1, Johnson has unilaterally delayed the implementation of some provisions of the deal’s Northern Ireland Protocol and his top negotiator has said the protocol is unsustainable.
The 1998 peace deal largely brought an end to the “Troubles” - three decades of conflict between Irish Catholic nationalist militants and pro-British Protestant “loyalist” paramilitaries in which 3,600 people were killed.
The British-run region remains deeply split along sectarian lines 23 years after the peace deal brokered by the United States.
Many Catholic nationalists aspire to unification with Ireland while Protestant unionists want to stay part of the United Kingdom.
The Northern Ireland Protocol aims to keep the province, which borders EU member Ireland, in both the United Kingdom’s customs territory and the EU’s single market.
The EU wants to protect its single market, but an effective border in the Irish Sea created by the protocol cuts off Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom - to the fury of Protestant unionists.
Some unionists say the protocol contravenes the 1998 peace deal.
Reporting by Costas Pitas and Guy Faulconbridge, Editing by Angus MacSwan
BELFAST (Reuters) -The European Union rejected a British demand to renegotiate their deal governing the trading position of Northern Ireland, saying that to so would only bring instability and uncertainty. | Video 10 Sep 2021
BELFAST A lawmaker for Northern Ireland's largest pro-British party on Friday described as "belligerent", "mistaken" and "foolish", comments by a senior European Union official rejecting British calls for a post-Brexit trade agreement to be renegotiated. 10 Sep 2021
BELFAST (Reuters) -Northern Ireland's largest pro-British party threatened on Thursday to withdraw from the region's power-sharing government within weeks unless big changes were made to the terms of Britain's divorce deal with the European Union.
PARIS French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Thursday that he had clearly told his British counterpart Priti Patel that the United Kingdom must stick to its commitments on migrants trying to cross the Channel to reach Britain.
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -The European Union and Britain must resolve problems over Northern Ireland trading using the protocol agreed between them, the EU's Brexit coordinator said on Wednesday, rejecting a British demand to renegotiate it.
LONDON/DUBLIN Britain plans to further extend post-Brexit grace periods on some goods imports to Northern Ireland, Brexit minister David Frost said on Monday, in a move designed to give London and Brussels more time for talks about trade with the province.
LONDON The stand-off between Britain and the European Union over post-Brexit trading rules for Northern Ireland threatens to create "cold mistrust" in the broader relationship between London and the bloc, Britain's Brexit minister said on Saturday.
LONDON (Reuters) -Britain's government has rejected calls from retail and logistics companies to temporarily ease post-Brexit immigration rules which they say are contributing to a shortage of truck drivers and acute supply chain disruption.
PARIS Michel Barnier, the European Union's former Brexit negotiator, said on Thursday he would participate in his centre-right camp's probable primaries for next year's French presidential election, joining an already crowded field of candidates.
DUBLIN (Reuters) -Britain and the European Union can sensibly solve issues over Northern Ireland's post-Brexit trading arrangements with the right political will, Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin said after meeting French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday.
LONDON Britain appointed former England cricket star Ian Botham as a trade ambassador to seek new deals for exporters in the country he most famously tangled with on the pitch - Australia.
BERLIN Activity in Germany's manufacturing and services sectors expanded in August, a survey showed on Monday, pointing to recovering employment levels, strong demand and a rosier business outlook even though the pace of growth fell slightly.
LONDON The ruling Scottish National Party agreed a power-sharing deal with the Scottish Green Party on Friday that cements a pro-independence majority in the devolved parliament ahead of a looming political battle over the future of the United Kingdom.
Australia finds itself as the common link in a new mesh of global alliances centred on the Indo-Pacific that are all but in name aimed at countering China's rising military power and economic clout.
Canberra's 70-year-old defence alliance with Washington already commits Australia to act in response to an attack on U.S. forces in the Pacific, analysts said.
A new defence partnership, AUKUS, with the United States and Britain to share nuclear-powered submarines is significant not only for increasing Australia's deterrence capabilities, but also focussing Britain on the region, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday.
The European Union's strategy to boost its Indo-Pacific presence, outlined on Thursday, will seek trade deals with Australia and Taiwan and closer maritime ties with Australia, Indonesia and Japan to keep open sea routes.
Morrison will travel to Washington on Monday for the first face-to-face meeting of leaders of the Quad, a grouping of India, Japan, Australia and the United States.
The scope of the talks, spanning freedom of navigation, critical technology and COVID-19 recovery, has grown swiftly since it was revived.
The Quad was put on ice a decade ago by Canberra because of the objections of China, its largest trading partner, to the group's naval exercises.
However, in 2021 Australia has become a case study for other nations of the potential for Chinese economic coercion. The treasurer recently advised exporters to diversify away from China because of Beijing's actions to target the Australian economy.
Head of the ANU National Security College, Rory Medcalf, said amid accelerating concerns about China: "Australia has crossed a strategic Rubicon, bitten the bullet, nailed its colours to the mast".
The AUKUS partnership and Quad will overlap as central to Australia's security, he said.
Rotating US troops in Australia
In radio interviews on Friday, Morrison said that contrary to China's objections, Australia's new security grouping was about ensuring stability in the region.
"We just want to ensure that right throughout the region there can be free movement of goods and services and maritime traffic and air traffic, and the rule of law applies," he said.
What happened in the Indo-Pacific was of concern to the rest of the world, he said.
"It isn't just the United States. It's the United Kingdom becoming a more significant partner with Australia on defence, one, but also, having their focus on this part of the world."
AUKUS alliance: Blinken seeks to calm French fury amid diplomatic row
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Australia and the United States agreed on Friday to increase the number of U.S. troops rotating through Australia, as well as aircraft and logistics support for U.S. naval vessels and submarines.
Director of Foreign Policy and Defence at the United States Studies Centre, Ashley Townshend, said the United States was leveraging Australia's strategic geography, and rotating U.S. submarines through Western Australia more regularly for maintenance would allow them to expand operations in the region.
Former prime minister Kevin Rudd said in a television interview the government needed to clarify whether the United States expected that Australia's nuclear-powered submarines would be deployed to support it any conflict over Taiwan or the South China Sea.
The United States said on Friday there is no reciprocal requirement.
"There has already been an expectation that Australia would join the United States and others - especially Japan - in discouraging or facing future military adventurism from China, over Taiwan, the South China Sea, the East China Sea," said Medcalf.
The new announcements increased Australia's capability for deterrence, he said.
"Australia's geography will allow the alliance to disperse and gather its forces in a way that America's frontline island bases like Guam cannot," he said.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology. The Telegraph can disclose that 26 of the 27 scientists listed in The Lancet letter had connections to the Chinese lab CREDIT: Thomas Peter
All but one scientist who penned a letter in The Lancet dismissing the possibility that coronavirus could have come from a lab in Wuhan were linked to its Chinese researchers, their colleagues or funders, a Telegraph investigation can reveal.
The influential journal published a letter on March 7 last year from 27 scientists in which they stated that they “strongly condemned conspiracy theories” surrounding Covid-19.
It effectively shut down scientific debate into whether coronavirus was manipulated or leaked from a lab in Wuhan.
On Friday, researchers who tried to investigate a link but were stonewalled and branded conspiracy theorists called it an “extreme cover-up”.
Despite declaring no conflicts of interest at the time, it has since emerged that the letter was orchestrated by British zoologist Peter Daszak, president of the US-based EcoHealth Alliance, which funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where the leak was suspected.
However, The Telegraph can disclose that 26 of the 27 scientists listed in the letter had connections to the Chinese lab, through researchers and funders closely linked to Wuhan.
While Mr Daszak eventually declared his involvement in the EcoHealth Alliance, he failed to mention that five other signatories also worked for the organisation.
A further three of the signatories were from Britain’s Wellcome Trust, which has funded work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the past.
Sir Jeremy Farrar, a member of Sage and the director of the Trust, who signed the letter, has also published work with George Gao, the head of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, whom he describes as an “old friend”.
Oxford-educated Dr Gao is a former Wellcome research assistant, and Mr Daszak has previously claimed Dr Gao had supported his nomination to the National Academy of Sciences.
Dr Gao also has close connections with Shi Zhengli, the scientist known as “batwoman” who was leading research into bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, and whose team discovered a virus in 2013 in a cave in Yunnan which is the closest ever found to Sars-Cov-2.
Another signatory, Prof Linda Saif, of Ohio State University, spoke at a workshop in Wuhan in May 2017 alongside Dr Shi and Dr Gao, organised partly by the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Topics discussed at the meeting included the level of security in Chinese labs. Prof Saif’s talk dealt with animal coronaviruses.
Similarly, two other signatories are in the leadership team of the Global Virome Project, of which Mr Daszak is treasurer. Dr Gao helped launch the project and EcoHealth Alliance is a partner.
The Global Virome Project’s goal is to detect and identify at least 99 per cent of potential zoonotic viral threats to human health and food security. It took over from the Predict project, which uncovered more than 1,000 unique viruses in animals and humans.
However, it has since emerged that Predict part-funded controversial work by Wuhan researchers on bat coronaviruses which were altered to see if they could infect humans. The funds came via EcoHealth Alliance.
In an email on Feb 8, released under Freedom of Information requests, Mr Daszak revealed he had composed the letter after being asked by “our collaborators” in China for a “show of support”.
Angus Dalgleish, professor of oncology at St Georges, University of London, and Norwegian scientist Birger Sorensen, who struggled to have work published showing a link between the virus and Wuhan research, said there had been an “extreme cover-up”.
Commenting on the discovery that so many of the signatories were linked to China, they said: “This article is the first to show beyond reasonable doubt that our entire area of virus research has been contaminated politically. We bear the scars to show it.”
Other signatories with links to the Wuhan team include Prof Kanta Subbarao, who spoke at a conference in Wuhan – part organised by the Wuhan Institute of Virology – on emerging disease in 2016, while she was still chief of the NIAID’s Emerging Respiratory Viruses Section.
Dr John Mackenzie, of Curtin University of Technology in Australia, put his name to the letter, but failed to mention he was still listed as a committee member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of Centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Five other signatories had all published articles with Prof Ralph Baric, who was collaborating with Shi Zhengli and the Wuhan Institute of Virology on research about genetically manipulating coronaviruses to see if they could be made to infect humans.
Crucially, Prof Baric was omitted from the list of signatures although he was initially asked to join the group by Mr Daszak. Emails have recently come to light between Mr Daszak and Prof Baric ahead of The Lancet letter showing that the pair decided to blur their association in case it looked “self-serving”.
Mr Daszak told Prof Baric he would distribute the letter in a way that “doesn’t link it back to our collaboration so we maximise an independent voice”.
Out of 27 signatories, only Prof Ronald Corley, of Boston University, appears to have no links to funders or researchers.
While an addendum was added to The Lancet letter in June this year, pointing out Mr Daszak’s links to Wuhan, no others revealed any conflict of interest at the time.
Molecular biologist Prof Richard Ebright, of Rutgers University, who has fought to uncover the truth behind the Covid pandemic, said: “For the June addendum, the Lancet invited the 27 authors of the letter to re-evaluate their competing interests.
“Incredibly, only Daszak appears to have done so. Conflicts of interest were not reported for any of the other 26 signers of the letter – not even those with obviously material undisclosed conflicts such as EcoHealth employees and Predict contractors.
“The standard remedy for fraudulent statements in scientific publications is retraction. It is unclear why retraction was not pursued.”
Several of those who signed the letters have since changed their stance, with Prof Peter Palese, of Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, now calling for a full inquiry.
Dr Charles Calisher, of Colorado State University, told The Telegraph that the letter never intended to suggest that Covid might not have a natural origin, rather that there was insufficient data.
Signatory Prof Stanley Perlman, of the University of Iowa, told The Telegraph: “It is difficult to eliminate a possible lab leak as part of the process, so this still needs to be considered.”
Prof Bernard Roizman has gone the furthest of all, telling the Wall Street Journal in May that he is now convinced the virus was accidentally released by a “sloppy” scientist.
Mr Daszak was removed from the UN’s Covid commission looking at the origins of the pandemic in June over his scientific impartiality. However he is still part of the World Health Organisation Covid investigation team.
Earlier this month, he co-authored an article in Nature with the WHO team claiming there was still little evidence for a lab leak theory and warning that it may soon be too late to get to the bottom of how the pandemic started.
Prof Dalgleish added: “It may now be too late to get to the bottom of what happened with the pandemic because of this stalling but I think enough evidence is out there. It may be that if they hadn’t been doing this work [a] pandemic might never have happened.”
When approached, the Lancet and Wellcome Trust refused to comment further on the letter. Nobody from EcoHealth Alliance had responded at the time of publication.
The Covid lab leak theory – according to the Chinese media
“Fort Detrick was the lab at the center of the US biological weapons program and the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID) is still based there, holding many dangerous pathogens including anthrax, smallpox and SARS.”
“There have been several well documented bio-safety breaches at the lab: in 2001 five died after an anthrax attack from a former employee; in 2016 nearby families won millions in compensation after toxic waste leaked; and in 2019 the US authorities temporarily shut the lab after identifying serious safety violations.”
“Research published by Prof Ralph Baric’s team in 2003 demonstrated work was already ongoing at USAMRIID to manipulate coronaviruses, including Sars.”
“In 2019 – not long after the lab was closed – nearby communities such as Greenspring were hit by respiratory disease outbreaks. At about the same time, there was a 'mysterious pneumonia outbreak' in Wisconsin.”
“A petition filed in March 2020 asking the US government to disclose why the USAMRIID lab was shut down – and if it was linked to Covid – has never been answered.”
Of the 27 scientists who wrote a letter in The Lancet medical journal dismissing the possibility that Covid-19 originated from a Wuhan lab, 26 have links to its Chinese researchers, their colleagues or its benefactors, a new investigation has revealed.
On March 7 last year, the influential journal published the letter in which the 27 scientists said they 'strongly condemned conspiracy theories' surrounding the origins of the coronavirus pandemic that has impacted all corners of the world.
All debate into whether Covid-19 had man-made origins or leaked from the lab in Wuhan - the Chinese city that was ground-zero for the virus - was effectively shut down by the letter.
However, an investigation by The Daily Telegraph newspaper into the signatories has found that 26 of the 27 had some link to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where the leak was suspected - calling into question their impartiality.
Signatories include Dr Peter Daszak, the British president of EcoHealth Alliance, which funnelled money into controversial research at a Wuhan Institute of Virology, and UK Government scientific adviser Sir Jeremy Farrar.
Only one - Dr Ronald Corley, a microbiology expert from Boston University - has been found to have no links back to funders or researchers at the Wuhan institute.
Below, the MailOnline looks at those signatories named by The Telegraph's investigation - and other key figures and organisations - to have links with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Dr Peter Daszak
Zoologist, EcoHealth Alliance, New York
The orchestrator of the letter, British zoologist Peter Daszak, was already found to have a conflict of interest through him being president of the US-based EcoHealth Alliance, which has funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Despite declaring no conflicts of interest at the time the letter was penned, The Lancet was forced to publish an addendum to the letter acknowledging Daszak's connection to EcoHealth Alliance.
The letter played a key role in suppressing early debate on the pandemic's origins, but its credibility has since been questioned after details emerged of the involvement of Peter Daszak (pictured), a major financial backer of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIU)
Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli (left) is seen inside the P4 laboratory in Wuhan, capital of China's Hubei province on February 23, 2017
In an email made public through Freedom of Information requests, Mr Daszak is said to have revealed on February 8 that he composed the letter after being asked by 'our collaborators' in China for a 'show of support'.
Scandal hit Dr Daszak has since been removed from the UN-backed Lancet commission looking at the origins of the pandemic.
However, The Telegraph has reported that five other signatories also worked for the same organisation. None of whom declared their involvement.
Two such signatories include Dr William Karesh, an infectious disease expert and Professor Hume Field, veterinary sciences expert.
Dr Jeremy Farrar
Tropical medicine expert and SAGE adviser & The Wellcome Trust, London
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Pictured: Dr Jeremy Farrar, tropical medicine expert and SAGE adviser. Also of the Wellcome Trust
The newspaper also found that three of the signatories were from Britain's Wellcome Trust.
Signatory Sir Jeremy Farrar, a member of the UK's Sage and the director of the Trust, has in the past published work with George Gao, the head of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, whom he has described as 'an old friend'.
Dr Gao, who studied at Oxford University, is a former research assistant at the Wellcome Trust. Mr Daszak has claimed Dr Gao supported his nomination to the National Academy of Sciences, according to The Telegraph.
The Chinese scientist also has connections to Shi Zhengli, the scientist who has become known as 'batwoman' on account of her research into bat coronaviruses in Wuhan. Her team discovered a virus in 2013 which is the closest ever previously found to Sars-Cov-2 - the virus that causes Covid-19.
Two other signatories - Dr Josie Golding and Professor Mike Turner - are known to have current or past connections with the Wellcome Trust.
Dr Golding is the Trust's Epidemics lead, while Prof. Turner is a Parasitology expert at the University of Glasgow, and formerly worked with the Trust.
George F. Gao, head of China's Center for Diseases Prevention and Control, attends a session at the China Development Forum in Beijing, China March 20, 2021
Speaking to the MailOnline in June on the lab leak theory, Dr Farrar said: 'The origins of Sars-Cov-2 are not yet certain — it is possible the origin will never be fully established — but nature is a powerful force and, in my view, the most likely scenario is that the virus crossed from animals to humans and then evolved in humans.
'The best scientific evidence available to date points to this. It is most likely it crossed the species barrier to infect and then adapt to humans at some point in 2019, but there are other possibilities which cannot be completely ruled out and retaining an open mind is critical.
'There is no place for unsubstantiated rumour, or conspiracy theories often fuelled for political purposes.'
Professor Linda Saif
Microbiology expert, The Ohio State University
Microbiology expert Professor Linda Saif, another signatory, spoke at a workshop in Wuhan in May 2017 along with Dr Shi and Dr Gao. The workshop was partly organised by the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The level of security in Chinese labs was among the topics discussed at the workshop, while Professor Saif's talk covered animal coronaviruses.
Professor Linda Saif
The Global Virome Project
Two more signatories on The Lancet letter are in the leadership team of the Global Virome Project - an organisations whose goal is to detect and identify 99 percent or more of potential zoonotic viral threats.
Mr Daszak is the treasurer of the Global Virome Project, while Dr Gao helped launch it, with EcoHealth Alliance as one of its partners.
The Global Virome Project took over from the Predict project, which discovered more than 1,000 unique viruses in animals and humans.
But according to The Telegraph, the Predict project was also found to have part-funded contentious work by Wuhan researchers on bat coronaviruses, which were altered to see if they could infect humans.
The funds for the research were provided by the EcoHealth Alliance.
Professor John Mackenzie
Tropical infectious diseases expert, Curtin University, Perth, Australia
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Professor John Mackenzie
Tropical infectious disease expert Professor John Mackenzie who works out of Curtin University in Perth, Australia, was another of the signatories.
The investigation has found that he did not disclose that he was still listed as a committee member of the the Scientific Advisory Committee of Centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan institute.
Professor Kanta Subbarao
Virology expert, The University of Melbourne, Australia
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Professor Kanta Subbarao Virology expert, The University of Melbourne, Australia
Professor Kanta Subbarao, another signatory from the University of Melbourne, spoke at a conference on emerging diseases in Wuhan in 2016 which was part-organised by the the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Prof. Subbarao was still chief of the US-based National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAD) Emerging Respiratory Viruses Section.
Five more of the letter's signatories have all been found by the investigation to have published articles with Professor Ralph Baric.
Professor Prof Ralph Baric
While Prof Baric was omitted from the list of signatories, he was collaborating with Shi Zhengli and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, researching genetically manipulated coronaviruses to see if they could be made to infect humans.
Earlier this year, Republicans in the US argued that the virus was possibly genetically modified, and cite an interview with Baric in which he said it was possible to engineer a virus, 'without leaving a trace.'
Pictured: Ralph Baric, researcher and lab leader at North Carolina's Gillings School of Global Public Health, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, February 14, 2020
Baric was initially asked to add his name to the letter by Mr Daszak, with emails between the pair recently coming to light ahead of The Lancet letter's publication, showing that the pair decided to mask their association with the Wuhan institute to avoid looking 'self-serving'.
Mr Daszak told Prof Baric that he would publish the letter in such a way that it doesn't 'link it back to our collaboration so we maximise an independent voice'.
Professor Peter Palese
Microbiology expert, Icahn School of Medicine, New York
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Professor Peter Palese
A number of those who signed the letter have since changed their stance with some calling for a full inquiry into the origins of Covid-19.
Speaking to the MailOnline in June, Professor Peter Palese - a microbiology expert from Icahn School of Medicine, New York, said: 'I believe a thorough investigation about the origin of the Covid-19 virus is needed.
'A lot of disturbing information has surfaced since the Lancet letter I signed, so I want to see answers covering all questions.'
Asked how he was originally approached to sign the letter and what new information had come to light specifically, Professor Palese declined to comment.
Professor Stanley Perlman
Microbiology expert, University of Iowa
Signatory Prof Stanley Perlman, of the University of Iowa, told The Telegraph: 'It is difficult to eliminate a possible lab leak as part of the process, so this still needs to be considered.'
Professor Charles Calisher
Microbiolgy expert, Colorado State University
Professor Charles Calisher, who signed the letter downplayed the letter to The Telegraph, saying that the intention behind it was never to suggest Covid-19 might have not originated in nature, but rather that there was a lack of data to make such a claim.
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Professor Charles Calisher (left) and Professor Stanley Perlman (right)
Professor Bernard Roizman
Microbiology expert, University of Chicago
Professor Bernard Roizman told the Wall Street Journal in May that since signing the letter, he has become convinced that the deadly virus was released by a 'sloppy' scientists.
Dr Ronald Corley
Microbiology expert, NEIDL Institute, Boston
Out of the 27 signatories of the Lancet Letter, The Telegraph reported that it could find no connection between just one and the Wuhan Institute of Virology - Dr Ronald Corley from Boston University.
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Dr Ronald Corley (left) and Professor Bernard Roizman (right)
Reacting to the findings of the investigation, researchers into the lab-leak theory who were blocked and branded conspiracy theorists called it an 'extreme cover up' on Friday, the newspaper reported.
Molecular biologist Prof Richard Ebright, of Rutgers University, fought to uncover the truth behind the Covid pandemic.
He told The Telegraph that after the June addendum that disclosed that Daszak had connections to the Wuhan institute, the other 27 signatories were invited to offer any of their own competing interests.
'Incredibly, only Daszak appears to have done so,' Ebright told the newspaper.
'Conflicts of interest were not reported for any of the other 26 signers of the letter – not even those with obviously material undisclosed conflicts such as EcoHealth employees and Predict contractors.'
Angus Dalgleish, professor of oncology at St Georges, University of London, warned that it could now be too late to fully learn the origins of Covid-19 because of what he called 'stalling', but remained hopeful that the evidence 'is out there'.
DID COVID LEAK FROM A WUHAN LAB? THE EVIDENCE FOR AND AGAINST
Evidence for Wuhan lab-leak theory
An article in the respected Science journal on May 14 kick-started the surge in interest for the lab-leak theory.
Some 18 experts wrote in the journal that 'we must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data'.
Later that month, a study by British Professor Angus Dalgleish and Norwegian scientist Dr Birger Sørensen claimed it had 'prima facie evidence of retro-engineering in China' for a year.
The study included accusations of 'deliberate destruction, concealment or contamination of data' at Chinese labs.
It followed statements from the WHO Director General, US and EU that greater clarity about the origins of this pandemic is necessary and feasible to achieve.
Previously, the theory had been dismissed as conspiracy by most experts, partly because of its association with President Donald Trump.
President Joe Biden in May ordered a full investigation into the origin of the pandemic virus and demanded scientists work out whether there is truth to the theory.
The head of the World Health Organization insisted just a day earlier that the theory that Covid emerged from a Wuhan lab has not been ruled out — as he said China should help solve the mystery out of 'respect' for the dead.
The body's director-general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, suggested that Beijing had not cooperated fully as he urged more 'transparency' in the continuing investigation.
Evidence against the theory
Several other sects of the scientific community continue to suggest the virus could only be natural in origin.
A series of recent papers pointed to the virus evolving in animals before being transmitted to humans, in the same way as all other previously discovered coronaviruses.
The first study, published in Scientific Reports, showed some 47,000 wild animals from 38 species were sold across four markets in Wuhan between May 2017 and November 2019.
The authors, including Dr Chris Newman, an evolutionary ecologist at Oxford University, claimed the evidence showed the conditions for animal-to-human transmission were in place in Wuhan.
But they acknowledged there was no proof Sars-CoV-2 was present or originated in any of these animals.
A joint World Health Organization-China investigation also concluded it was 'very likely' the virus jumped from bats to humans via an as-yet-unknown intermediary animal.
26 Lancet scientists who trashed theory that Covid leaked from Chinese lab have links to Wuhan
