China’s public health authorities cracked virus’ genetic code five DAYS before the world knew about the disease, scientist claims

China’s public health authorities cracked the genetic code of the Covid virus five days before the rest of the world even learned about the existence of the disease, according to a prominent British scientist.

The revelation, confirmed by independent investigators, exposes the scale of Beijing’s cover-up of the outbreak in Wuhan – which experts fear inflamed the pandemic’s spread with disastrous consequences.

The genome sequence, vital for developing diagnostic tests and vaccines, was finally shared with the rest of the world more than two weeks later by a Chinese scientist defying the Beijing government – by which time the sequence had been assembled by several of the country’s private and public laboratories.

‘As more information about the early stages of the pandemic emerges, we see a disturbing pattern of efforts to hide critical information,’ said Bryce Nickels, co-founder of campaign group Biosafety Now.

The professor of genetics at Rutgers University in New Jersey added that attempts to manipulate public opinion began in China but were later echoed in the US and other Western countries.

The disclosure came in private messages exchanged by four scientists in Australia, Britain and the US as they drafted a controversial article in a journal that played a central role in crushing debate over a possible laboratory leak origin.

Their ‘super secret’ discussions on the Slack messaging system emerged from a US Congressional inquiry into the ‘Proximal Origins’ statement in Nature Medicine, which the journal’s editor claimed should stop ‘conspiracy theories’.

The landmark article stated unequivocally that the scientists ‘do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible’ – although the messages reveal their fears Covid could have come from a lab even after its publication.

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