The UK government is preparing to officially acknowledge the growing international consensus that Covid-19 likely originated from a leak at a Wuhan laboratory.
The UK government is poised to shift its official stance on the origins of Covid-19, aligning with the growing international belief that the virus emerged from a leak at a Wuhan laboratory. This change follows a previous report by the CIA indicating that a laboratory leak was the most probable explanation.
In response to a query from Tory peer Lord Kempsell, health minister Baroness Merron stated that the government 'has noted the Central Intelligence Agency's assessment and will continually review our own assessment of the origins of the virus, considering any new intelligence.' The Mail on Sunday first disclosed in April 2020 that intelligence experts suspected a laboratory origin, but this was publicly dismissed as a 'conspiracy theory.' The favored narrative, less likely to antagonize China, was that it resulted from 'zoonotic' animal-to-human transmission in a market.This shift in the UK government's stance comes after years of speculation and debate surrounding the virus's origins. Initially, the dominant theory was zoonotic transmission, mirroring the path of previous pandemics like SARS and MERS. However, the growing body of evidence pointing towards a laboratory leak has led to a reassessment of this position. In his recent memoir, 'Unleashed,' former Prime Minister Boris Johnson expressed his belief that the virus originated from a lab leak, stating: 'The awful thing about the whole Covid catastrophe is that it appears to have been entirely man-made, in all its aspects. It now looks overwhelmingly likely that the mutation was the result of some botched experiment in a Chinese lab.' This shift in the official narrative carries significant weight, potentially leading to renewed investigations and a more transparent understanding of the pandemic's origins
COVID-19 Lab Leak Wuhan UK Government Intelligence Zoonotic Transmission
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