Thread by @Arbuthnott

REVEALED: Scientists in Wuhan working alongside the Chinese military combined the world’s most deadly coronaviruses to create a new mutant virus - just before the Covid-19 outbreak.

New Insight investigation with @JCalvertST: thetimes.co.uk/article/inside…

US investigators with access to top-secret intelligence told Insight they believe Chinese scientists were running a covert project of dangerous experiments, which caused a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and started the Covid-19 outbreak.

The Sunday Times has reviewed hundreds of documents, including previously confidential reports, internal memos, scientific papers and email correspondence that has been obtained through sources or by freedom of information campaigners in the three years since the pandemic began

The Wuhan institute was engaged in increasingly risky experiments on coronaviruses it gathered from bat caves in southern China. Initially, it made its findings public and argued the associated risks were justified because the work might help develop vaccines

This changed in 2016 after researchers discovered a new type of coronavirus closely related to Covid-19 in a mineshaft in Mojiang where people had died from coronavirus symptoms

Rather than warning the world, the Chinese authorities did not report the fatalities. The viruses were transported back to the Wuhan institute and a veil was drawn over its research on the mine viruses.

According to the US investigators, the classified programme was to make the mineshaft viruses more infectious to humans.

They believe this led to the creation of the Covid-19 virus, and it leaked out into Wuhan after a laboratory accident

The investigators say the project was kept secret because it was funded by the Chinese military. Evidence shows People's Liberation Army scientists were working alongside the Wuhan institute on experiments with the world’s most deadly coronaviruses in the lead up to the pandemic.

Read the full investigation here: thetimes.co.uk/article/inside…