No evidence indicates novel coronavirus leaked from Chinese lab: Report

No current evidence suggests that novel coronavirus is leaked from a Chinese research laboratory, UK newspaper the Guardian reported on Monday, citing intelligence sources, contradicting recent White House claims that there is growing proof this is how the pandemic began.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday: "I can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan." But he did not provide any of the alleged evidence.

As doubts about the high security Wuhan Institute of Virology are raising, US scientists who have worked with the Wuhan Institute add its safety standards are comparable to Western equivalents, according to the Guardian. And they said the prevailing theory is that the virus was passed onto humans via one of the country's live animal markets.

The Australia's Daily Telegraph highlighted a 15-page research document on Monday, accusing China of deliberately suppressing or destroying evidence of the novel coronavirus outbreak. The dossier, the sources said, was not culled from intelligence from the Five Eyes network, an alliance between the UK, the US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

Intelligence sources in Australia said they believed it was based on open source, public domain material, as the Guardian reported.

One told the newspaper they believed the information was most likely to have originally come from the US. "My instinct is that it was a tool for building a counter-narrative and applying pressure to China. So it's the intent behind it that's most important. So possibly open source leads with a classification slapped on it."

Downing Street said that the UK did not comment on intelligence matters – although British sources told the Guardian they did not recognize the dossier as based on classified information provided by the country's spy agencies.

Claims are even made that the virus was genetically engineered in Wuhan, although there is both scientific and intelligence agency agreement that there is no evidence for this, said the Guardian.