Australian intelligence officials have no evidence of Wuhan lab link to coronavirus
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has raised doubts about reports the coronavirus started in a Wuhan laboratory, after Australian intelligence officials were unable to find any evidence to support the theory.
Intelligence agencies in the United States are investigating whether the virus started at the Wuhan Institute of Virology near where the outbreak was first recorded as part of a number of theories relayed to the Australian government under the Five Eyes intelligence sharing arrangement.
Scientists at the epidemiological laboratory in Wuhan's Institute of Virology. Credit:AFP
The intelligence has found no evidence that the Wuhan lab was the cause of the outbreak - only that it is one of a number of scenarios that cannot be ruled out.
The most likely cause of the virus is still the city's Huanan Seafood Market where environmental samples of the virus were found, Australian intelligence officials believe. Scientists studying the pathogen's genome have said it can only have evolved in nature and had long been warning that deforestation, urban sprawl and wet markets selling live wildlife such as that market in Wuhan were creating a "perfect storm" for another dangerous virus to jump from animals into humans.
Mr Morrison is also of the belief the wet market is the most likely culprit and has told senior members of the government he has seen no evidence that would suggest otherwise, several senior government sources confirmed.
Health Minister Greg Hunt on Wednesday said the original source of the virus had not been determined but "we do know, and all have agreed, that it was early spread within a wet market".
Intelligence shared with the Australian government has also rejected any suggestion that the virus was intentionally released.
The theory that the coronavirus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology has been receiving significant coverage in the American media. News Corp's Australian newspapers also published reports this week revealing two Chinese scientists who work at the Wuhan lab have previously studied live bats in Australia in research jointly funded by the Australian and Chinese governments.
Senior sources within the Australian intelligence community have told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age there is growing concern about promoting the theory when there was "no positive evidence".
"We can't rule it out, we can't rule out a lot of things," one senior source said. "It's hard to prove a negative".
Some senior members of the government are also uneasy about the theory being promoted when Australia is campaigning on the global stage to ban wildlife wet markets and push for a global review into the origins of the virus.
The legal wildlife trade continued in China after a wet market gave birth to the first deadly coronavirus outbreak of the modern era, SARS, in 2002.
Now wet markets have again reopened in Wuhan as the city emerges from lockdown, a move the Mr Morrison has called "unfathomable" given what is known about their risks to global health.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology is just thirty minutes drive from the market, an offshoot of the state-owned Chinese Academy of the Sciences, built with help from France. But virologists say it's not top secret - international collaboration is common and its researchers had been trained to handle dangerous pathogens as part of a long partnership with the Galveston lab in the US.
While viral leaks are not without precedent around the world, and there had been concerns raised by the US State Department in 2018 about a lack of staff at the lab, the scientists at the facility have strongly denied a connection to the pandemic.
Its deputy director Shi Zhengli, who helped trace the origins of SARS, said she checked the lab's own samples as the new virus emerged just in case something had been mishandled, but it hadn't. The virus is new, scientists say, and has not been recorded by a lab before.
The theory of the viral leak is surfacing again as Australia and other countries try to counter a Chinese disinformation campaign, which has included a claim that it was a US military delegation that brought COVID-19 to Wuhan.