China lied about origin of coronavirus, leaked intelligence report says.
A damning dossier leaked from the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance claims that China lied to the world about human-to-human transmission of the virus, disappeared whistleblowers and refused to hand over virus samples so the West could make a vaccine.
The bombshell 15-page research document also indicated that some of the five intelligence agencies believe that the virus may have been leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a claim initially dismissed as a conspiracy theory because Chinese officials insisted the virus came from the local wet markets, according to The Daily Telegraph.
At the same time, a senior intelligence source told Fox News that while most intelligence agencies believe COVID-19 originated in the Wuhan lab, “it was thought to have been released accidentally.”
The report from the intelligence-sharing alliance of the five leading English-speaking countries, the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada called China’s shady handling of the virus “an assault on international transparency.”
The paper described how China downplayed the outbreak around the world while wildly scrambling to bury all traces of the disease at home, including bleaching wet market stalls, censoring the growing evidence of asymptomatic carriers of the virus and stonewalling sample requests from other countries.
Beijing started censoring search engines as early as December to stop internet surfing related to the virus, according to the report.
The World Health Organization went along with China’s claims and also denied human-to-human transmission of the virus despite concern from neighbouring countries.
Intelligence gathering showed that China had “evidence of human-human transmission from early December,” but continued to deny it could spread this way until January 20, according to the dossier.
The document pointed out China imposed travel bans on people travelling throughout the nation, but continued to tell the rest of the world travel bans were unnecessary.
This article was originally published by the New York Post and is reproduced with permission