Boris Johnson has revealed that he now believes the Covid pandemic is the result of a leak from a Chinese laboratory.
It was a break from his tenure as Prime Minister, when he said more than seven million people had died worldwide as the virus ‘jumped species’.
Animal-to-human transmission at the Wuhan animal market remains a theory supported by many scientists, including in a landmark study earlier this month when researchers tested genetic samples from animals sold there early in the pandemic and found traces of the Covid virus in several species.
But in his bombshell comments in his new memoir Unleashed, Mr Johnson claimed: ‘The terrifying thing about the whole Covid disaster is that it seems to be entirely man-made, in every aspect.
‘It now seems overwhelming that the mutation is the result of a botched experiment in a Chinese laboratory.
‘Some scientists were clearly splicing bits of the virus together like the witch in Macbeth – the eyes of a bat and the toes of a frog – and oops, the nimble little critter jumped out of the test tube and started replicating around the world.’
Johnson is the most senior world leader since Donald Trump to publicly deny that the virus was transmitted to humans from infected animals.
But a major international study published earlier this month supports the theory that the virus started in a wet market in Wuhan, rather than the market simply amplifying its spread as a super-spreading event.
Researchers tested genetic samples of animals sold at Wuhan market stalls and found traces of the Covid virus in several species since early 2020.
He said this is the first time scientists have identified an animal that may be responsible for transmission to humans.
‘This adds another layer to the accumulation of evidence that all point to the same scenario: that infected animals were introduced to the market in mid-to-late November 2019, causing a pandemic,’ said study author Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research.
Former PM Mr Johnson has previously linked the pandemic to what he called a ‘demented’ belief in parts of Asia that ‘if you grind pangolin scales, you’ll get stronger’ – although he has gradually become more skeptical as the information is informed. emerged about experiments conducted by Wuhan scientists.
(Image: Lynsey Addario/Getty Images)
America’s FBI director says Covid-19 most likely ‘came from a laboratory controlled by the Chinese government.
In 2023, Christopher Wray told Fox News: ‘The FBI has been evaluating for some time now whether the origin of the pandemic is likely to have occurred in a laboratory.’
A joint China-World Health Organization (WHO) investigation in 2021 called the lab leak theory ‘impossible.’
However, the WHO investigation was heavily criticized and the director-general has since called for a new investigation, saying: ‘All hypotheses remain open and require further study.’
In April 2020, at the start of the UK-wide lockdown, The Mail on Sunday became the first mainstream media outlet to reveal fears that the virus had leaked from a laboratory in China.
A member of Cobra, the Government’s secret emergency committee, told the newspaper that Ministers are reviewing intelligence on the accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where scientists are conducting high-risk experiments to fake the coronavirus – samples from bats in a cave nearly 1,000 miles away. – to make people more transmissible.
The official line remains that the virus was transmitted in an animal market in Wuhan, although DNA analysis of Covid-19 has traced it back to bats found only in remote caves.
The authors of this month’s latest study on the origin of the virus suggested that raccoon dogs, a fox-like animal common in East Asia, may be the main carrier of the virus.
Other animals such as masked palm weasels, bamboo rats and Malayan hedgehogs were also found to carry Covid-19 in wet markets before the disease spread to humans.
This is not a definitive list because many major animal species were removed from the market before the Chinese health team arrived, said Florence Débarre of France’s National Center for Scientific Research, who led the study.
Writing on Twitter, he said that ‘a lab leak is a possibility that needs to be considered and owned. No one will tell you differently.’
But he said ‘the current version of the lab leak is a conspiracy theory’, for example the claim that the study’s author ‘believed the leak privately but has conspired to hide the truth since 2020 under Fauci’s pressure’.
This claim is a crazy conspiracy theory. I hope this helps,” he said.
Contact the news team by emailing webnews@metro.co.uk.
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