A British government official in Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s administration said a theory the coronavirus was accidentally leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, is “not discounted.”
One member of Johnson’s emergency response team, COBRA, said the latest information does not dispute that the virus began when it passed from animals to humans at markets in the city, but another theory is also “credible.”
“There is a credible alternative view [to the zoonotic theory] based on the nature of the virus. Perhaps it is no coincidence that there is that laboratory in Wuhan. It is not discounted,” the adviser told the Mail on Sunday.
There are two labs near Wuhan that are believed to have studied the coronavirus, the Institute of Virology and the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control.
Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican, has also raised questions about whether the novel coronavirus strain originated in the labs.
“Given [China’s] dishonesty and the proximity of these labs, which we know were working with coronaviruses, it is only reasonable and responsible for us to ask the question and demand the answers,” Cotton said.
“The mainstream media are largely apologists for Chinese communists, and they will accept Chinese communist propaganda,” he said. “They immediately try to accuse anyone who raises these reasonable questions as conspiracy theorists that are accusing China of creating a biological weapon.”
