Former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson believes the COVID-19 pandemic likely started as a result of a laboratory accident in Wuhan, China, not from an animal-to-human transmission of the virus.
The revelation comes from a sneak peek of his memoir Unleashed that was published this weekend in the British outlet Daily Mail. The book will arrive on shelves Oct. 10.
“The awful thing about the whole Covid catastrophe is that it appears to have been entirely man-made, in all its aspects,” said Johnson.
Johnson, a controversial Conservative Party figure, was prime minister from July 2019 to September 2022 during the height of the pandemic, instituting various government emergency powers and a nationwide COVID-19 vaccine program.
Whether SARS-CoV-2 spread to humans through animal transmission at the Huanan Seafood Market or as a result of an accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, both located in one of the most populous cities in China, has been the topic of fierce scientific and political debate since 2020.
Recently, a group of scientists who have long supported the animal origins theory published a paper further supporting the seafood market as ground zero for infections
However, a significant portion of virologists and other life science experts worldwide believe it is at least plausible that the virus could have originated in the lab.
Johnson is one of the most high-profile political leaders who openly supports the theory that the virus came from a lab incident. In his book, he says the virus “was the result of some botched experiment in a Chinese lab.”
“Some scientists were clearly splicing bits of virus together like the witches in Macbeth — eye of bat and toe of frog — and oops, the frisky little critter jumped out of the test tube and started replicating all over the world,” said Johnson in his memoir.
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More than 7 million people worldwide have died from COVID-19, with at least 3 million dying within the first year, according to the World Health Organization.
According to the U.K. Office for National Statistics, there were nearly 74,000 COVID-19 deaths in England and Wales in 2020.