Lab leaks and accidents up 50% in UK since pandemic: Report



Elements of the U.S. government remain reluctant to conclude whether the unhygienic Chinese communist-run lab at the center of the pandemic — where patients zero conducted radical experiments on coronaviruses — was indeed the origin of the virus. Time and federal lawsuits may yet reveal whether alleged bribes helped muddy waters stateside.

A fact that does not depend upon the consensus of government agencies possibly affected by Anthony Fauci's apparent cover-up and the communist regime's denial is that lab leaks happen. Not only do they happen, they recur frequently, both in countries like China, where biosafety is notoriously second-rate, as well as in Western nations.

This is especially true in Britain, where the Telegraph recently highlighted a 50% rise in lab leaks and accidents since the emergence of COVID.

This massive increase in leaks is all the more alarming granted freedom of information requests to the British government, to universities in the U.K., and to government research bodies have revealed that lethal viruses and bacteria ranging from anthrax and rabies to Middle East respiratory syndrome are being stored nearby in large populations.

As demonstrated early in the COVID pandemic — where the Chinese regime wittingly permitted hundreds of thousands of possibly infected travelers to travel internationally whilst limits were otherwise placed on domestic travel — a problem abroad can fast become a problem for America.

The Health and Safety Executive, a British government agency responsible for workplace health and safety, reportedly recorded 286 lab incidents or near misses between January 2010 and December 2019. That averages out to roughly 28 a year.

The COVID pandemic evidently did not chasten Britons sporting lab coats. Since January 2020, the HSE has recorded 156 incidents, or 42 lab incidents a year.

The HSE, which divulged this startling number only because it had been threatened with contempt of court by the Information Commissioner's Office, refused to provide full details about some of the incidents because they involved viruses and bacteria listed in the Terrorism Act, reported the Telegraph.

Col. Hamish Stephen de Bretton-Gordon, a chemical weapons expert and former commander of NATO's Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense Forces, said, "The apparent lab leaks in this country alone show we are all sitting on a ticking time bomb."

"It seems highly likely that (Covid-19) was man-made, though also likely an accident at a lab, rather than deliberate," Bretton-Gordon told the Telegraph. "The next pandemic is highly likely to be man-made, given the ease and unregulation of synthetic biology, and could kill millions of people."

Even when regulations are in place, dangerous experiments continue behind closed doors.

While, for instance, the Obama administration announced a pause on the funding of any new studies involving gain-of-function experiments with influenza, SARS, and MERS viruses in 2014, the National Institutes of Health nevertheless approved continued GOF research on coronaviruses with funding from Peter Daszak's scandal-plagued EcoHealth Alliance, which was in turn partly funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The Telegraph noted that among the lab accidents revealed by freedom of information requests were:

  • a bird flu leak from a cracked test tube at a Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency lab in Hertfordshire, England;
  • an accident involving Neisseria meningitidis, a bacteria linked to life-threatening sepsis, which prompted an evacuation at the Manchester Royal Infirmary;
  • COVID breaches at an uncommissioned lab at the University of Liverpool;
  • the escape of a mutant mouse; and
  • an accidental injection of a lab worker with a modified form of Trypanosoma cruzi, the parasite that causes Chagas disease.
Just as concerning as Britain's inability to keep its viruses locked up is the 2023 Global Biolabs Report suggesting that the U.K. actually has a relatively high biosafety score — 18 out of a possible 20. Australia and Canada rank highest, as both have a score of 20. India, the Ivory Coast, Gabon, and Saudi Arabia rank lowest, scoring 5, 3, 3, and 1, respectively.
The Global Biolabs Report noted that out of a possible biosecurity score of 18, Britain scores 17. The U.S., by way of comparison, has a perfect score. Again, India, the Ivory Coast, Gabon, and Saudi Arabia score poorly, 5, 1, 1, and 2, respectively.
A Chatham House report revealed there were lab-acquired infections in 309 individuals from 51 pathogens around the world between 2000 and 2021. In 16 incidents, pathogens reportedly escaped biocontainment facilities, reported the Telegraph.
Dr. David Harper, former chief scientist and director general for health improvement and protection in the British Department of Health, was greatly disturbed by the Telegraph's findings, stating, "Accidental breaches in laboratory biocontainment can have potentially catastrophic consequences."
"The accidents that are reported today without doubt provide an underestimate of the true scale of the problem," continued Harper. "Greater transparency, with better reporting, documentation and analysis, is urgently required together with improved governance and oversight."
The HSE recorded 376 incidents of release or escape of biological agents outside of labs.
Bretton-Gordon wrote, "There are around 4,000 laboratories and one million scientists who have the ability to manipulate the genome to create a devastating pathogen and at the moment nobody is looking too closely at them."
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Report: Former British health secretary was censored by government on lab leak claims, China criticism



Over 100,000 WhatsApp messages attributed to former British health secretary Matt Hancock were recently leaked to the Telegraph by the journalist with whom he penned his book, "Pandemic Diaries."

Hancock's correspondences have since provided Britons with some insight into the machinations and thinking of their government at the outset of the pandemic.

For instance, they learned that at one stage via messages from Hancock's deputy in the Department of Health and Social Care from 2020 to 2021 that ministers had considered exterminating all cats in the isles to prevent the spread of COVID.

Perhaps more alarming is the new report that the British government sought to prevent Hancock from suggesting in his book, "Pandemic Diaries," that COVID-19 may have come from a Chinese lab.

Ministry of truth

The Telegraph reported that Hancock initially intended to suggest the zoonotic origins theory "just doesn't fly."

However, the Cabinet Office, keen not to "cause problems" with the genocidal Chinese Communist Party, stressed to the health secretary that the British government's position was that the outbreak's location (i.e., near a controversial lab that conducted dangerous experiments on coronaviruses) was "entirely coincidental."

This so-called coincidence claimed the lives of tens of millions worldwide, including over 207,000 in the United Kingdom.

The difference between the following excerpts, first as they appeared in Hancock's manuscript, then as they appear in their final form in the book as approved by the Cabinet Office after it had made its changes, are significant.

In the manuscript, Hancock wrote: "Given how cagey the Chinese have been, I think we have to treat their official version of events – still the Wuhan thing – with considerable scepticism. Imagine there was an outbreak of a deadly new virus in Wiltshire and we shrugged off the fact that the outbreak ‘just so happened’ to be near a little place called Porton Down. We’d be laughed out of town. Global fear of the Chinese must not get in the way of a full investigation into what happened."

The Cabinet Office suggested this "is highly sensitive and would cause problems if released."

It would appear global fear of the Chinese regime was sufficient to thwart even a cabinet minister's discussion of a full investigation.

In the sanitized version, the Cabinet Office had the following go to print: "Though the international consensus and the government’s position is that the virus originated at the Wuhan wet market, I remain sceptical. There must be a full investigation into what happened."

The Telegraph revealed that the Cabinet Office claimed in response to Hancock's initial writ that "the reference to Porton Down is damaging to national security," as Russia had drawn a link between the bioweapons lab and the Novichok poisoning just a few miles away.

Porton Down is the site where the U.K. conducts some of its military research and was where the government ran its chemical and biological weapons program until allegedly closing it down in 1950. Now, officials claim that Porton Down has since been "active in developing effective countermeasures to the constantly evolving threat posed by chemical and biological weapons."

Whereas some portions of Hancock's manuscript were sanitized, others were purged altogether.

The former health secretary reportedly planned to write in one section, "To me it seems pretty credible. It’s just too much of a coincidence that the pandemic started in the same city as the lab, which – by the way, is a full 40 minutes drive from the wet market originally linked to the outbreak."

"The only plausible alternative is that the virus was brought to Wuhan to be studied, and then escaped," he added. "The Chinese denials are a bit like us claiming that a random virus just happened to break out near a little place called Porton Down, perhaps because of some badgers. It just doesn’t fly."

Again, the Cabinet Office apparently did not find that this telling satisfactorily complemented the Chinese regime's preferred narrative. Hancock was permitted only to say, "To me, this explanation seems pretty credible. The plausible alternative is that the virus was brought to Wuhan to be studied and then escaped."

Appeasing the dragon

The British government's public view on the origins of COVID-19 has evolved slowly over the years.

When the Trump administration suggested the virus originated in a CCP lab at the outset of the pandemic, Foreign Policy reported the United Kingdom was unwilling to upset Beijing with similar boldness.

Then-prime minister Boris Johnson told reporters in May 2020 that "[c]learly there are questions that need to be answered about the origin and spread of the virus," adding that "[t]his will need to be done with all our international partners, including China."

According to the Sun, Johnson had been briefed by national security officials in April about the possibility of a lab leak, elsewhere derided as a conspiracy theory. His chief advisor at the time, Dominic Cummings, suggested there was uncertainty about whether the virus was engineered, whether it escaped from a lab, and what the implications might be.

In March 2021, the World Health Organization issued a China-approved and Chinese co-authored report concluding "a laboratory incident was considered to be an extremely unlikely pathway."

Shortly thereafter, Johnson, still publicly preferential to the zoonotic origin theory, claimed the government believed it was "much more likely" that the Wuhan virus "jumped" from animals to humans.

While Johnson was hedging, British intelligence agencies finally admitted that lab origins were "feasible."

Cambridge bio-security fellow Hamish de-Bretton Gordon told the Telegraph in February 2022 that attitudes had since changed in the British government, noting a growing sense that the "zoonotic transfer theory just didn't make sense."

"There is a huge amount of concern about coming out publicly, but behind closed doors most people think it’s a lab leak. And they are coming round to the fact that even if they don’t agree with that, they must accept it’s likely, and they must make sure the policies are in place to stop it," said Gordon.

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