Washington| Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s call for an accelerated investigation into the origins of the virus that causes COVID-19 might have gained some momentum this week, after information surfaced showing that unauthorised research was being conducted in Wuhan, China, just before the outbreak.

EcoHealth Alliance, a research grantee of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and intermediary between the NIH and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was revealed this week to have violated provisions of its contract by generating up to 10,000 times an allowable viral load of bat coronaviruses before COVID-19 broke out.