About three and a half years after the appearance of the coronavirusits former top scientist Chinese government points out that the possibility of a leak of the Covid virus from a laboratory should not be ruled out, according to what he told BBC News.

As head of China’s Center for Disease Control (CDC), Prof George Gao played a key role in dealing with the pandemic and in efforts to identify its origin.

THE government of China rejects any suspicion that the disease may have originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. But Professor Gao is not ruling anything out.

In an interview for the BBC Radio podcast, the professor argues: “You can always suspect anything. This is science. Don’t rule anything out.” he said characteristically

Professor Gao is now vice president of the National Natural Science Foundation of China after retiring from the CDC last year.

In a possible indication that the Chinese government may have taken the lab leak theory more seriously than its official statements suggest, Professor Gao also tells the BBC that some sort of official investigation has taken place at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). , where the coronavirus is rumored to have leaked.

“The government organized something,” he says, but adds that his own department was not involved, pointing out that “the laboratory was double-checked by experts in the field.”

This is the first such admission that some kind of official research has taken place in the lab, but while Professor Gao says he has not seen the result, he has “heard” that everything is working as it should in the lab.

“I think their conclusion is that they are following all the protocols. They have not found [καμία] wrongdoing,” he said.