The Institute of Virology is ten miles from the wet market at the centre of the crisis (Picture: Institute of Virology)

Ministers fear that coronavirus may have originated in a Chinese research lab and not a wet market in Wuhan, as widely suspected.

According to the Mail on Sunday, senior government sources are entertaining the possibility that Covid-19 may have leaked from a research facility in the Chinese epicentre instead.

‘The balance of scientific advice’ means the live animal market remains the most likely scenario for the outbreak of coronavirus, the sources said, but the idea that it may have leaked from a research laboratory is ‘no longer being discounted’.

According to a member of COBRA – the government’s emergency committee – the latest evidence does not not rule out the possibility of a leak.


A wet market in Wuhan is still the most likely source of the viris, experts say (Source: AFP)

‘There is a credible alternative view [to the theory it came from contact with animals] based on the nature of the virus,’ the COBRA source said.



‘Perhaps it is no coincidence that there is that laboratory in Wuhan. It is not discounted.’

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The Institute of Virology, described as the most advanced laboratory of its type on the Chinese mainland, is situated in Wuhan and just ten miles from the market thought to be at the centre of the coronavirus crisis.

The state-run People’s Daily newspaper reported in 2018 that the Institute – one of the most secure virology units in the world – was ‘capable of conducting experiments with highly pathogenic microorganisms’ such as the Ebola virus.

A member of COBRA, which is led by the Prime Minister, said there was a ‘credible alternative view’ to the accepted story of the oubreak. (Source: PA)

In 2004, a leak from a Chinese laboratory led to the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which killed one person and infected nine others.

The Chinese government said at the time that the leak was down to negligence and punished five senior officials at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.

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