Subscription Notification
We have noticed that there is an issue with your subscription billing details. Please update your billing details here
Please update your billing information
The subscription details associated with this account need to be updated. Please update your billing details here to continue enjoying your subscription.
Your subscription will end shortly
Please update your billing details here to continue enjoying your access to the most informative and considered journalism in the UK.

Accessibility Links

Skip to content
Subscribe

Covid: Wuhan lab leak is ‘feasible’, say British spies

Intelligence fears grow of Chinese cover-up

Larisa Brown, Diplomatic and Security Correspondent | Madeleine Spence
The Sunday Times
The focus on the Wuhan Institute of Virology comes after new information emerged about three researchers who fell ill in November 2019
The focus on the Wuhan Institute of Virology comes after new information emerged about three researchers who fell ill in November 2019
HECTOR RETAMAL/GETTY IMAGES
Larisa Brown, Diplomatic and Security Correspondent | Madeleine Spence
The Sunday Times

British intelligence agencies now believe it is “feasible” that the global pandemic began with a coronavirus leak from a Chinese research laboratory.

In a significant sharpening of tension with Beijing, they are investigating a possible leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which Beijing angrily insists was not the source of the virus that has caused more than 3.5 million deaths and is still raging globally.

They do so as controversy grows about the alleged silencing of scientists who wanted an investigation of the lab-leak theory.

For the past 16 months — since China first confirmed that people were infecting one another with a new and deadly virus in the city of Wuhan — British, American and other western intelligence agencies have appeared to discount