Australia

Australia hits back at US claim linking coronavirus to Wuhan lab

The Australian government has pushed back at US claims the coronavirus may have originated in a Wuhan lab and has determined that a “dossier” giving weight to the theory is not a Five Eyes intelligence document.

It is understood the Morrison government sees the promotion of the theory the virus leaked out of a laboratory in Wuhan, China, as counterproductive to Australia’s push to gain broad international support for an independent inquiry into the origins and overall handling of the pandemic.

But the government appears to be walking a diplomatic tightrope, declining to back up the claim while also not wishing to antagonise its US allies – given that Donald Trump and the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, have claimed there is enormous evidence for the theory.

Speculation about the possible involvement of the US embassy in distributing the dossier to News Corp has raised the diplomatic temperature.