Scientists are warning that a chilling series of red flags continues to be overlooked when viruses escape from labs, as whistleblowers claim Covid‘s true origins were covered up for years.
A team led by Sandhya Dhawan from the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit in Thailand noted that there had been roughly 70 infamous lab leaks since the 1900s and expected there to be even more in the future, which threaten the globe.
In the study, they focused on seven of these deadly incidents from 1955 to 2019, discovering the leaks all shared the same warning signs, such as unexplained early spread without a clear animal source, delayed reporting and outbreaks emerging near laboratories handling dangerous viruses.
Together, these lab leaks caused more than 1,800 known laboratory exposures, over 1.1 million infection cases and more than 700,000 deaths.
‘The question is not if a pathogen will escape, but rather which pathogen will and what measures are in place to contain an escape with serious consequences,’ the team warned in the study.
The alarming findings come as fresh whistleblower allegations on Wednesday reignite the explosive debate over whether Covid originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
Former CIA officer James Erdman told a Senate hearing that US intelligence officials were preparing to conclude the pandemic likely leaked from a Wuhan lab before Dr Anthony Fauci allegedly ‘significantly influenced’ agencies to back away from that assessment in 2021.
Although the researchers did not directly investigate Covid in their review, Dr Jessica Rose, a Canadian immunology researcher at Memorial University of Newfoundland who was not involved in the study, told the Daily Mail that she believes Covid displayed several of the same unusual warning signs outlined in the paper.
Scientists are warning that a chilling series of red flags continues to be overlooked when viruses escape from labs, as whistleblowers claim Covid’s true origins were covered up for years
Rose pointed to what she described as three unusual features in Covid’s genetic code: a mutation called the furin cleavage site that made the virus highly infectious, strange genetic ‘cutting patterns’ often associated with lab research and a short sequence she claimed matched material found in a 2016 Moderna patent involving the human gene MSH3.
She argued these characteristics were highly unusual compared to closely related coronaviruses found in nature.
‘I think the alignment with the “unusual/rare/novel strain characteristics” indicators in the Dhawan et al. paper’s framework is unmistakable,’ Rose said.
Rose explained that the furin cleavage site is a genetic feature that made Covid-19 especially effective at infecting human cells, despite being absent from many of the virus’s closest known relatives.
She also claimed the virus contained unusual restriction-site patterns, which are sequences scientists use to cut and assemble genetic material during laboratory research.
‘Together these form a cluster of rare coincidences that legitimate scientists argue deserve closer scrutiny as possible lab-origin signals,’ Rose added.
The claims remain heavily disputed within the scientific community, and the new study did not conclude that Covid was engineered or leaked from a laboratory.
However, the Thai researchers said outbreaks involving unusual pathogen behavior should be investigated rapidly and transparently before public health crises escalate.
Former CIA officer James Erdman told a Senate hearing that US intelligence officials were preparing to conclude the pandemic likely leaked from a Wuhan lab before Dr Anthony Fauci allegedly ‘significantly influenced’ agencies to back away from that assessment in 2021
The seven major outbreaks researchers believed displayed strong indicators were accidental laboratory origins, including cases involving SARS, smallpox and polio.
One of the most severe occurred in 1955 during the Cutter Laboratories polio vaccine incident in California, when improperly inactivated vaccines containing live poliovirus were distributed to children.
About 120,000 children received the faulty doses, leading to roughly 40,000 infections, more than 200 cases of paralysis and at least 10 deaths.
Another alarming case came in 1977, when a strain of H1N1 influenza known as the ‘Russian flu’ suddenly reemerged in China and the Soviet Union after seemingly disappearing for decades.
Scientists later suspected the virus may have accidentally escaped from a laboratory or vaccine trial, eventually spreading worldwide and infecting millions.
In 1979, anthrax spores accidentally leaked from a Soviet military bioweapons facility in Sverdlovsk, now Yekaterinburg, exposing nearby residents to the deadly bacteria.
Soviet officials initially blamed contaminated meat, but later investigations confirmed at least 66 people died in what became one of the most infamous biological accidents in history.
The team also highlighted the 1995 Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis outbreak in Venezuela and Colombia, which some researchers suspected may have originated from a laboratory strain used in vaccines or scientific research.
The lab leak theory states that Covid escaped from a Chinese research lab in Wuhan rather than spreading naturally from animals to humans
The mosquito-borne virus infected tens of thousands of people and killed an estimated 300.
Following the original SARS outbreak, several separate lab accidents between 2003 and 2004 infected researchers handling the virus in Singapore, Taiwan and China.
The incidents sparked global alarm about biosafety failures after one person died and multiple others were infected through accidental exposure inside research facilities.
In 2007, a leak of foot-and-mouth disease virus from a research and vaccine complex in Pirbright, England spread to nearby farms and forced officials to slaughter thousands of animals to contain the outbreak.
Although the disease rarely infects humans, the incident caused devastating economic losses and intensified fears about safety protocols at high-containment laboratories.
Dr Jessica Rose is a Canadian researcher and expert in immunology with a Master’s degree from Memorial University of Newfoundland
More recently, in 2019, a biopharmaceutical plant in Lanzhou, China, accidentally released airborne bacteria that cause brucellosis after workers reportedly used expired disinfectants during vaccine production.
More than 10,000 people later tested positive for the infection, which can trigger chronic fatigue, fever and severe joint pain.
The study warned that misinformation, secrecy and delayed responses repeatedly worsened the impact of these outbreaks and eroded trust in public health institutions.
‘Media further contributed to misinformation and infodemics, which eroded public trust in vaccines. Vaccine rates significantly dropped across the world,’ the researchers wrote.
Rose warned that many of the same warning signs identified in the study, including confusing public messaging and efforts to downplay emerging outbreaks, continue to appear during new health scares.
‘No one has been held to account yet, so there’s no reason for the powers that be not to do a repeat performance,’ she said.
However, Rose added that she was surprised by Erdman’s testimony to the Senate Homeland Security Committee, in which he declared: ‘Dr Fauci’s role in the cover-up was intentional.’
The lab leak theory states that Covid-19 escaped from the Wuhan lab rather than spreading naturally from animals, such as bats, to humans.
The COVID-19 virus (Pictured) has been tied to a lab leak in Wuhan, China. Some scientists have claimed that there are clear signs the pathogen was genetically engineered
The claims remain heavily disputed within the scientific community, and the new study did not conclude that Covid was engineered or leaked from a laboratory.
However, the researchers said outbreaks involving unusual pathogen behavior should be investigated rapidly and transparently before public health crises escalate.
Despite allegedly having evidence of a lab leak in 2021, the CIA only backed the claim with ‘low confidence’ in January 2025 after years of refusing to take a position on the pandemic’s origins following the alleged Fauci meeting.
Erdman also alleged at the hearing that the CIA ‘illegally monitored’ the phones and computers of federal analysts investigating the origins of the virus.
‘The CIA illegally monitored the computer and phone usage of DIG [Director’s Initiatives Group] personnel, their investigations, and contact with whistleblowers,’ he claimed.
The CIA has not publicly confirmed Erdman’s allegations.
The researchers concluded that unless governments improve biosafety standards, transparency and outbreak reporting, the same overlooked warning signs that appeared before past lab-related outbreaks could allow another global crisis to spread before the world realizes what is happening.
Rose argued that, at the moment, nothing has significantly changed since Covid, despite the Trump Administration cutting off funding to Gain-of-Function (GOF) research, which changes a virus or bacteria to make them stronger and more contagious.
‘Until the people responsible for the horrible damages incurred during and after the Covid era are held accountable, mitigation of infectious disease and even GOF pathogens will not get better.’
