The possibility that the covid-19 virus leaked from a laboratory should not be ruled out, he said BBC news a former Chinese government scientist. As head of China’s Center for Disease Control (CDC), Professor George Gao played a key role in the response to the pandemic and efforts to trace its origins.

So far, the Chinese government has rejected any suggestion that the disease came from the Chinese laboratory in Wuhan.

Professor Gao stated, “You can always suspect something. That’s science. Don’t rule anything out.”

Gao, a leading virologist and immunologist, is now vice president of China’s National Natural Science Foundation after retiring from the CDC last year. In a possible sign that the Chinese government has taken the laboratory leak theory more seriously than official statements suggest, Professor Gao also told the BBC that some form of formal investigation was being conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“The government organized something,” he says, but adds that his own department, China’s CDC, was not involved.

Originated in Wuhan?

The theory circulating when the pandemic broke out in 2020 was that the virus spread naturally from bats to humans, perhaps through other animals, and that it originated in a market in Wuhan.

The British news network asked the scientist to clarify whether that meant another branch of the government had formally searched the WIV, one of China’s main national laboratories, which is known for years of studying coronaviruses.

“Yes,” he replied, “that lab has been reviewed twice by the experts in the field.”

This is the first admission that any official investigation has been made, but while Prof. Gao says he did not see the result, he claimed to have “heard” that the lab had received a certificate of good standing.

“I think the bottom line is that they follow all protocols. They found (no) irregularities,” he added.

Knowing how the virus got from bats to humans has been somewhat controversial because there were two possibilities.

One is that the virus spread naturally from bats to humans, perhaps through other animals, and many scientists say the weight of evidence suggests this is the most likely scenario.

But other scientists stress that there is not enough evidence to rule out the main alternative possibility: that the virus infected someone involved in research designed to better understand the threat posed by naturally occurring viruses.