COVID-19: Wuhan lab evidence would have been 'destroyed' by China, says ex-MI6 chief

Evidence of novel coronavirus leak from Wuhan lab that could be the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic would have been destroyed by Chinese officials, former British intelligence service or MI6 chief has said. Sir Richard Dearlove, who was in charge of MI6 service between 1999 and 2004, has said that it would now be challenging to prove that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was working on experiments to make a coronavirus that would be more deadly to humans. 

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, claims, dismissed as a conspiracy theory, have also emerged that the novel coronavirus might have accidentally leaked from the laboratory where the scientists were working on the pathogen. However, many scientists have insisted that the virus migrated naturally from animals to humans. 

The conspiracy theory proponents are the fact that WIV had been studying the coronaviruses in bats for more than ten years. It is located just a few miles away from the Huanan wet market, which is also one of the earliest known clusters of COVID-19 in China. The former MI6 chief said that the West had been naive in placing trust in China which had infiltrated scientific institutions and journals in the UK along with the rest of the world. Richard told The Daily Telegraph's Planet Normal podcast that it was possible Chinese scientists in WIV who were willing to speak about any coronavirus experiments were “silenced.”

"The People's Republic of China is a pretty terrifying regime and does some things we consider unacceptable and extreme in silencing opposition to the official line of the government," he said.

"We don't know that's what's happened, but a lot of data has probably been destroyed or made to disappear so it's going to be difficult to prove definitely the case for a 'gain of function chimera' being the cause of the pandemic,” he added.

MI6: Wuhan Lab Leak Theory 'Feasible'

The British intelligence services reportedly believe that it is “feasible” that the pandemic began after the COVID-19 virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan. According to Sunday Times, the UK agents are investigating a possible leak from the Wuhan  Institute of Virology. Even though British, American and other western intelligence agencies had appeared to discount the possibility of a lab leak, they now said that there has been a reassessment and further deemed the possibility as “feasible”. 

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