China ‘no longer deserves benefit of the doubt’: Bombshell Senate report concludes that COVID ‘most likely’ leaked from lab – as lawmakers point the finger at Beijing

• Policymakers said ‘substantial’ evidence pointing to lab accident has emerged
• But evidence for a natural spillover ‘is missing’ even after three years of probes 
• Unwillingness to cooperate means China ‘should no longer get benefit of doubt’ 
• Findings come in an interim report pubished by the Senate Committee on Health
• Origins of Covid still shrouded in mystery with no concrete evidence either way
• But China has shut down independent probes into lab and silenced scientists

By Connor Boyd

 The Covid pandemic was most likely the result of a lab leak, according to a bombshell Senate report.

Reacting to the committee’s findings, the White Coat Waste Project campaign group said: ‘Once again, an authoritative Congressional report has concluded that taxpayer-funded gain-of-function experiments on animals in Wuhan likely caused the Covid-19 pandemic.

‘Yet, nearly three years into the pandemic, the white coats responsible for probably causing and covering up this global disaster have not been held accountable.

‘Lab accidents are common and taxpayers in both parties shouldn’t be forced to pay for another pandemic.’

The report, helmed by Sen Burr, highlights there is some indirect evidence that Covid emerged naturally.

Policymakers point out that a third of Covid cases were linked back to the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan – an animal slaughter market where exotic animals were kept in squalid conditions.

A series of studies published earlier this year appeared to trace the first cluster of cases back to one specific corner of the wet market, where animals known to harbor Covid including raccoon dogs, hedgehogs, rats and squirrels were kept.

Chinese scientists also found positive samples of an ancestral Covid strain on floors, counters and equipment in the market.

But to date ‘there is no published genetic evidence that Covid was circulating in animals prior to the start of the pandemic’, the Senate report says.

And the Republicans claim the samples collected from the market’s stalls are too similar to the virus that circulated in humans to have been shed by animals.

‘There also do not appear to have been subsequent spillovers of the virus’ from animals to humans or vice versa in the past three years.

‘It is also noteworthy that the earliest variants of SARSCoV-2 were well-adapted for human-to-human transmission,’ the report adds.

Meanwhile, the report found there had been at least six research-related incidents involving Covid at biosecurity labs in China, Taiwan and Singapore.

It also cites claims the 1977 H1N1 flu outbreak was the result of a research-related incident, which remains a theory but has the backing of many scientists.

The committee writes: ‘In short, human errors, mechanical failure, animal bites, animal escapes, inadequate training, insufficient funding, and pressure for results can lead to an escape of virulent pathogens, which could, in turn, infect animals and humans and lead to a release of a virus from a lab.’

Questions about the Wuhan Institute of Virology located just eight miles away from the wet market where early cases were clustered – remain unanswered.

Chinese officials were found to have wiped crucial databases from the lab and stifled independent investigations into the facility.

Researchers who fell ill with a mysterious flu-like virus months before the official Covid timeline were silenced or disappeared.

The WIV specialized in dangerous viruses and one of its chief scientists was nicknamed the ‘Bat Lady’ for her extensive work on coronaviruses like Covid.

It received funding from the federal Government to conduct gain-of-function research, which involves tinkering with viruses to make them more infectious or deadly to get ahead of future outbreaks.

WIV researchers actively sampled bats in Southern China and mainland Southeast Asia where the SARS-related coronaviruses most similar to SARS-CoV-2 have been collected and identified.

Viruses collected from these regions are up to 97 per cent similar overall to the Covid virus that spread around the world.

The Senate report found staff at the WIV wore ‘inadequate levels of personal protective equipment while handling bats’ after analyzing film and photo footage years before the pandemic.

The WIV had in 2018 unsuccessfully peitioned the federal government for funding to research SARS-related coronaviruses with potential to bind to human ACE2 receptors. The funding for the risky research was not ultimately granted to WIV researchers.

The lawmakers behind the report detailed evidence of biosafety and mismanagement concerns at the high security biocontainment labs, which had an expansive collection of coronaviruses including more than 1,400 samples of bat viruses from the wild.

The committee included insight from a WIV official dating back to May 2019 who warned: ‘Currently, most laboratories lack specialized biosafety managers and engineers. In such facilities, some of the skilled staff is composed by parttime researchers. This makes it difficult to identify and mitigate potential safety hazards in facility and equipment operation early enough.’

Efforts by the WIV to bolster their biosafety protocols were repeatedly stymied by what officials called the ‘stranglehold problem,’ which meant a lack of access to advanced foreign biosafety technologies and materials.

The report also describes researchers’ high pressure work environments that could affect how careful they are in high security labs working closely with pathogenic viruses.

It included excerpts from a 2019 report written by the WIV’s BSL4 laboratory team in which researchers said ‘Owing to [the fact] that the subject of research at the P4 lab is highly pathogenic microorganisms, inside the laboratory, once you have opened the stored test tubes, it is just as if having opened Pandora’s Box.’

They added that ‘Although [we have] various preventive and protective measures, it is nevertheless necessary for lab personnel to operate very cautiously to avoid operational errors that give rise to dangers.’

The committee also enumerated the unique qualities of the coronavirus and the way it spread early on in the pandemic that suggests the pathogen was not a product of natural spillover.

‘A research-related incident is consistent with the early epidemiology showing rapid spread of the virus in Wuhan, with the earliest calls for assistance being located in the near the WIV’s original campus in central Wuhan,’ the report said.

It went on, ‘It also explains the low genetic diversity of the earliest known SARS-CoV-2 human infections in Wuhan, because the likely index case, would be an infected researcher, is the likely primary source of the virus in Wuhan.’

Scientists who support the theory that the coronavirus jumped from animals to humans argue that an intermediate host was probably necessary to increase the virus’ chances of being able to infect and replicate in humans so effectively.

But scientists have yet to identify that intermediate host, which authors of the report said pokes a hole in the zoonotic spillover theory.

The senators concluded, ‘Advocates of a zoonotic origin theory must provide evidence … as was demonstrated for the 2002-2004 SARS outbreak. There needs to be verifiable evidence that a natural zoonotic spillover actually occurred, not simply that such a spillover could have occurred.’

The Senate GOP’s report comes just days after researchers in the US and Germany found the ‘strongest piece of evidence’ yet that the virus was man-made.

After studying the virus’s genome, they found ‘peculiar patterns’ visible in the building blocks of the pandemic-causing virus, which they say are hallmark signs that it was manufactured. The team described it as having a ‘synthetic fingerprint’.