German report that Covid began in Wuhan laboratory was ‘buried’

German spies were almost certain the Covid pandemic originated in a Wuhan laboratory but heads of government buried their potentially explosive assessment, according to reports.

This photo taken on February 22, 2020 shows a man who has recovered from the Covid-19 coronavirus infection being disinfected by a medical staff before leaving the hospital in Wuhan in China. Picture: AFP

German spies were almost certain that the Covid pandemic originated in a Wuhan laboratory, only for successive chancellors to bury the potentially explosive intelligence assessment, according to reports.

Investigations by the newspapers Zeit and Suddeutsche Zeitung found that the chancellery of Angela Merkel commissioned the foreign intelligence agency, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), to assess the origins of the virus in 2020.

It analysed public data and material obtained as part of an intelligence operation codenamed Saaremaa, including scientific data from Chinese research institutions, such as the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

It was said to have found evidence of high-risk experiments that artificially modified naturally occurring viruses, and numerous breaches of laboratory safety regulations.

(The Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province as members of the World Health Organisation team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus make a visit in 2021. Picture: AFP

The BND’s president at the time, Bruno Kahl, briefed the chancellery while Ms Merkel was still in office. The laboratory thesis was seen to be accurate with a probability of “80 to 95” per cent.

However, according to reports, Ms Merkel decided to keep the assessment secret. Mr Kahl is said to have informed the chancellery again after Olaf Scholz took over the government in 2021, but the results were again not made public.

Then German chancellor Angela Merkel enters the cabinet room followed by then finance minister and vice-chancellor Olaf Scholz in 2020. Picture: AFP

At the end of last year, the German government decided to commission external experts to review the BND’s findings. Their conclusions are yet to be revealed. A government spokesman said it would not “comment publicly on intelligence matters”.

China has repeatedly rejected speculation that the virus might have been created in a lab but governments around the world have gradually reached that conclusion.

(FILES) This file photo taken in 2017 shows a worker inside the P4 laboratory in Wuhan. Picture: AFP

An aerial photo of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Picture: AFP

In January the CIA issued an assessment under President Donald Trump stating that its analysts favoured the lab leak theory after the agency previously said it did not have enough evidence to decide whether the virus emerged from the Wuhan wet market or its research facility.

There was no new evidence behind the shift but it followed a months-long review of the available data that began under president Joe Biden.

Beijing pointed to a joint investigation by Chinese experts and specialists from the World Health Organisation, who visited the Wuhan laboratory in early 2021. After spending 12 days there, they had concluded that the lab leak theory was “extremely unlikely”.

The WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has since called for a new investigation, however, stressing that “all hypotheses remain open”.

The Times