Genome sequencing almost certainly proves COVID was deliberately made in a lab, US experts claim

Two U.S. experts have penned a damning essay saying the genome sequencing of COVID-19 strongly suggests that the virus was manufactured inside a Chinese laboratory.  

Dr. Stephen Quay and Richard Muller, a physics professor at the University of California Berkeley, made the claim in The Wall Street Journal on Sunday, amid growing speculation that the coronavirus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). 

‘The most compelling reason to favor the lab leak hypothesis is firmly based in science,’ the experts wrote, stating that ‘COVID-19 has a genetic footprint that has never been observed in a natural coronavirus.’

Quay and Muller assert that the Wuhan lab was known for conducting ‘gain-of-function’ research where scientists would ‘intentionally supercharge viruses to increase lethality’. 

COVID-19 has the genome sequencing ‘CGG-CGG’ – one of 36 sequencing patterns. That combination is commonly used by scientists in gain-of-function research, but is otherwise considered extremely ‘rare’. 

The experts assert that no naturally occurring coronavirus – such as SARS or MERS – has ever had a CGG-CGG combination. 

‘The CGG-CGG combination has never been found naturally. That means the common method of viruses picking up new skills, called recombination, cannot operate here,’ they wrote.  

‘A virus simply cannot pick up a sequence from another virus if that sequence isn’t present in any other virus.’

The essay comes after an explosive study last week claimed that Chinese scientists created COVID-19 in the Wuhan lab, then tried to cover their tracks by reverse-engineering versions of the virus to make it look like it evolved naturally from bats.

The paper’s authors, British Professor Angus Dalgleish and Norwegian scientist Dr Birger Sørensen, wrote that they have had ‘prima facie evidence of retro-engineering in China’ for a year — but were ignored by academics and major journals.

Dr. Stephen Quay and Richard Muller have penned a damning essay claiming the genome sequencing of COVID-19 strongly suggests that the virus was manufactured inside a Chinese laboratory

COVID-19 has the genome sequencing ‘CGG-CGG’ – one of 36 sequencing patterns. That combination is commonly used by scientists in gain-of-function research, but is otherwise considered extremely ‘rare’. Researchers are pictured inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in January 2020 

In the new essay, Quay and Muller go on to state that those who believe COVID-19 began by being transferred from animals to humans ‘must explain why it happened to pick its least favorite combination: CGG-CGG. Why did it replicate the choice the lab’s gain-of-function researchers would have made?’

The pair conclude: ‘Yes, it could have happened randomly, through mutations. But do you believe that? At the minimum, this fact—that the coronavirus, with all its random possibilities, took the rare and unnatural combination used by human researchers—implies that the leading theory for the origin of the coronavirus must be laboratory escape.’ 

In recent weeks, many of the world’s top scientists have pushed to determine whether the virus was leaked from the WIV. 

The lab leak theory was initially dismissed by many in the media and academic communities.  

President Joe Biden last week ordered intelligence agencies to launch a probe into whether COVID was man-made after all.

Circumstantial evidence has long raised questions about the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where researchers were known to be conducting experiments on bat coronavirus strains similar to the one responsible for COVID-19.

China insisted early and often that the virus did not leak from the lab, claiming that crossover to humans must have occurred at a ‘wet market’ in Wuhan that sold live animals.

Perhaps driven by animosity for Donald Trump, who embraced the lab leak theory early on, the mainstream U.S. media and academics heaped scorn on the possibility, calling it an unhinged conspiracy theory.

But new evidence, including reports of three workers at the Wuhan lab who fell seriously ill with COVID-like symptoms in November 2019, has forced a sober reassessment among doubters.

Frustration with China increased this week after Beijing said that it would not participate in any further investigations by the World Health Organization.

Biden rebuked China in his announcement of the new intelligence review, calling on allies to help ‘press China to participate in a full, transparent, evidence-based international investigation and to provide access to all relevant data and evidence.’   

Meanwhile, the former head of the Food and Drug Administration, Scott Gottlieb, has said Fauci told world leaders in the spring of 2020 that the coronavirus may have escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China.  

U.S. researchers around that time still were considering whether the virus came from a lab break, and Fauci told the health leaders gathered that the newly identified strain of the coronavirus ‘looked unusual,’ according to Gottlieb.

The disclosure from the former FDA chief comes as an increasing number of mainstream scientists and media figures no longer are parroting the line from the Chinese Communist Party that the virus came from a bat. 

Even President Joe Biden has ordered government agencies to investigate the possibility that it might have come from a lab.

Now, Gottlieb says Fauci last year at least considered that COVID-19 could have come from a lab – before closing ranks around the idea that it occurred naturally. 

Gottlieb, who served under President Donald Trump, said a former senior member of the Trump administration told him at the time of Fauci’s 2020 talk. Gottlieb said he’d recently reconfirmed with that person that Fauci had given the talk. 

‘I think early on, when they looked at the strain, they had suspicions,’ Gottlieb recalled Sunday on CBS Face the Nation, speaking of U.S. scientists. ‘And it takes time to do that analysis, and that dispelled some of those suspicions,’ he added.

A worker is seen inside the P4 laboratory in Wuhan back in 2017

While China has tried to insist the virus originated elsewhere, academics, politicians and the media have begun to contemplate the possibility it escaped from the WIV – raising suspicions that Chinese officials simply hid evidence of the early spread

And it’s also important, Gottlieb said, to look at the virus beyond a scientific perspective: It also needs to be examined from a national security lens, he said.  

‘A scientific mindset looks at the virus and the virus’ behavior and draws a conclusion,’ he said. 

‘A national security assessment looks at that and then looks at the behavior of the Chinese government, the behavior of the lab, other evidence around the lab – including the infections we now know took place – and that changes the overall assessment,’ he said.

Although some experts still believe the virus was transmitted from a bat to some other species of animal, then to humans, its origins remain unproven. 

It comes after study last week claimed that Chinese scientists created COVID-19. 

That paper was authored by Professor Dalgleish, an oncologist at St George’s University, London, and Dr Sørensen, a Norwegian virologist and chair of pharmaceutical company Immunor.

The shocking allegations in the study included accusations of ‘deliberate destruction, concealment or contamination of data’ at Chinese labs, and it noted the silencing and disappearance of scientists in the communist country who spoke out.

The journal article, exclusively obtained by DailyMail.com, is set to make waves among the scientific community, as the majority of experts have until recently staunchly denied the origins of COVID-19 were anything other than a natural infection leaping from animals to humans.

While analyzing COVID-19 samples last year in an attempt to create a vaccine, Dalgleish and Sørensen discovered ‘unique fingerprints’ in the virus that they say could only have arisen from manipulation in a laboratory.

They said they tried to publish their findings but were rejected by major scientific journals which were at the time resolute that the virus jumped naturally from bats or other animals to humans.

Even when former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove spoke out publicly saying the scientists’ theory should be investigated, the idea was dismissed as ‘fake news.’ 

Daily Mail has been asking if the virus stemmed from a Wuhan lab since April 2020

The Daily Mail has consistently questioned the early consensus that COVID-19 was transmitted to humans from animals.

Our reporters have dug into the details and challenged the assumptions about how the pandemic originated. 

APRIL 4, 2020: 

Did coronavirus leak from a research lab in Wuhan? Startling new theory is ‘no longer being discounted’ amid claims staff ‘got infected after being sprayed with blood’

Ministers fear that the coronavirus pandemic might have been caused by a leak from a Chinese laboratory, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Senior Government sources say that while ‘the balance of scientific advice’ is still that the deadly virus was first transmitted to humans from a live animal market in Wuhan, a leak from a laboratory in the Chinese city is ‘no longer being discounted’.

One member of Cobra, the emergency committee led by Boris Johnson, said last night that while the latest intelligence did not dispute the virus was ‘zoonotic’ – originating in animals – it did not rule out that the virus first spread to humans after leaking from a Wuhan laboratory. 

APRIL 15, 2020:

Mike Pompeo demands truth from Beijing as US investigates if COVID-19 escaped from Wuhan lab during experiments and China covered it up by blaming ‘wet’ food markets

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has demanded that China ‘come clean’ following reports that coronavirus originated in a Chinese laboratory, not as a bioweapon, but as part of bungling experiments to prove that Chinese scientists were superior to Americans in identifying emerging virus threats.

It comes after President Donald Trump said on Wednesday the U.S. is trying to determine whether the coronavirus first crossed to humans accidentally during experiments with bats at the Wuhan Institute of Virology Lab.

After word of the outbreak finally became public, Chinese leaders were quick to blame Wuhan’s ‘wet market’ where wild animals — though not bats — are sold for consumption, leading one source to tell Fox News the debacle is the ‘costliest government coverup of all time.’

MAY 2, 2020: 

Wuhan virus lab ‘cover-up’: Startling photos of scientists wearing little protection as they handle deadly bat samples vanish from website of Chinese institute at the centre of global suspicion over pandemic 

Pictures which appear to show slack safety standards at the Chinese laboratory at the centre of international sus­picion over Covid-19 have been systematically deleted from its website – as Donald Trump continues to ramp up the pressure on Beijing over its potential role in the outbreak. 

During the past month, Wuhan’s Institute of Virology has removed photographs of scientists working in its laboratories and edited out references to visits by US diplomats who subsequently raised the alarm about the laboratory’s work on bats. 

US President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he had seen intelligence that gave him a ‘high degree of confidence’ that the global crisis had its origins in the institute – a month after The Mail on Sunday first revealed that British Cabinet Ministers had received classified briefings raising the possibility of a leak from the institute. 

Downing Street did not take issue with President Trump’s remarks. ‘There are clearly questions that need to be answered about the origin and spread of the virus,’ a spokesman for Boris Johnson said. 

MAY 30, 2020:

Beijing now admits that coronavirus DIDN’T start in Wuhan’s market… so where DID it come from 

China has become used to public confessions on television. But this time the words came from one of the nation’s top officials and had seismic global implications.

‘At first, we assumed the seafood market might have the virus, but now the market is more like a victim,’ said Gao Fu, director of the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.

Gao’s initial analysis had made sense after previous outbreaks of zoonotic viruses (diseases that jump from animals to humans). Yet suspicion grew over the Chinese government’s failure to share data from animals sampled in the market following its early cover-ups.

JANUARY 2, 2021: 

China lab leak is the ‘most credible’ source of the coronavirus outbreak, says top US government official, amid bombshell claims Wuhan scientist has turned whistleblower 

One of America’s most senior government officials says the most ‘credible’ theory about the origin of coronavirus is that it escaped from a laboratory in China.

Matthew Pottinger, who is President Donald Trump‘s respected Deputy National Security Adviser, told politicians from around the world that even China’s leaders now openly admit their previous claims that the virus originated in a Wuhan market are false.

Mr Pottinger said that the latest intelligence points to the virus leaking from the top-secret Wuhan Institute of Virology, 11 miles from the market, saying: ‘There is a growing body of evidence that the lab is likely the most credible source of the virus.’

JANUARY 9, 2021:

New cover-up fears as Chinese officials delete critical data about the Wuhan lab with details of 300 studies vanishing – including all those carried out by virologist dubbed Batwoman

The Chinese government is facing fresh accusations of a cover-up after officials deleted crucial online data about the laboratory suspected of being the source of Covid-19.

The Mail on Sunday can reveal that hundreds of pages of information relating to studies carried out by the top-secret Wuhan Institute of Virology have been wiped.

Details of more than 300 studies, including many investigating diseases that pass from animals to humans, published online by the state-run National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) are no longer available.

APRIL 24, 2021:

Worrying new clues about the origins of Covid: How scientists at Wuhan lab helped Chinese army in secret project to find animal viruses 

Scientists studying bat diseases at China‘s maximum-security laboratory in Wuhan were engaged in a massive project to investigate animal viruses alongside leading military officials – despite their denials of any such links.

Documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday reveal that a nationwide scheme, directed by a leading state body, was launched nine years ago to discover new viruses and detect the ‘dark matter’ of biology involved in spreading diseases.