Michael Gove caused a stir at the Covid Inquiry after he became the first senior government figure to publicly acknowledge the plausibility of the lab leak theory.
“Though I think this probably goes beyond the remit of the inquiry, there is a significant body of judgment that believes that the virus itself was man-made — and that presents its own set of challenges,” said Gove, while being quizzed about the government’s pandemic response and his role at the time heading the cabinet office.
The levelling up secretary was promptly cut off by his questioner, Hugo Keith QC: “It forms no part of the terms of reference of this inquiry to address that somewhat divisive issue, so we’re not going to go there.”
Almost four years on from the first detected outbreak of Covid-19 in Wuhan, questions over the origins of the virus remain shrouded in mystery.
There are two main schools of thought. The natural “spillover” theory – that the virus spread naturally from animals to humans – is still considered the most likely explanation by much of the scientific community, including the WHO. That said, a global body of scientists has cast doubt on the credibility of its 2021 investigation into Covid’s origins given China’s insistence on a “joint inquiry”.
The second theory is that Covid-19 was accidentally leaked by a laboratory which was carrying out research into similar viruses. The Wuhan Institute of Virology – a 40-minute drive from the Huanan wet market where the first cluster of infections emerged – just so happens to be the world’s leading laboratory when it comes to experimenting on large numbers of bat coronaviruses.
While the latter theory has moved from fringe to mainstream, there is still a strange resistance to properly exploring it – as illustrated by the speed at which Gove was shut down at the inquiry.
In the early days of the pandemic, it was partly discredited by getting mixed up with far-fetched conspiracy theories about Beijing engineering the virus as a biological weapon to unleash on the world.
But this resistance also stems from a conflict of interest. Research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology has received generous funding from the US government.
This week, Dr Robert Kadlec, the former Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the US Department of Health, conceded that Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, had dismissed the lab leak theory in the face of significant evidence. This, he acknowledged, was partly because Fauci – whose agency allocated grant money to the WIV – was afraid of bringing unwanted attention to these links and putting his reputation at stake.
Dr Kadlec added that he agonises over his own culpability in downplaying the possibility that Covid escaped from a lab: “I wake up at usually about 2 or 3am and think about it,” he told Sky News.
However it was Kadlec’s comments on Chinese military scientist Zhou Yusen that were even more eye-catching.
Yusen, who had been conducting research on live animals at the Wuhan Institute of Virology since 2019, led a team that became the first in China to submit a patent for a Covid-19 vaccine in February 2020, barely one month after China put Wuhan into a lockdown.
Three months later, the 54 year-old scientist who had no known illnesses, was dead, after allegedly falling from the roof of the Wuhan Institute.
The speed of Yusen’s Covid vaccine turnaround, paired with his mysterious death, has fuelled speculation that he could have accidentally caused the Covid pandemic by working on a vaccine months before Beijing acknowledged the outbreak of the novel virus.
And Dr Kadlec has further stoked speculation that Dr Yusen’s death was not an accident: “It looked like he was censored as a consequence of whatever happened.”
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