“We must reassess how we look at the world’s laboratories.”
He said there were 57 Level 4 laboratories capable of producing deadly pathogens such as Anthrax, which has a 95 per ent mortality rate if a victim is left untreated for 48 hours, and bubonic plague. These include the Government’s Defence's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at Porton Down.
But, he warned, there are also 3,200 Level 3 laboratories, “many of which are scattered at various universities and which may contain the flu virus.”
De Bretton- Gordon, formally the colonel in charge of the UK’s Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Regiment added: “It’s very possible that an accident at a laboratory at Wuhan led to the initial transmission of Covid-19, and we’ve seen a proliferation of level 3 and 4 high containment laboratories.