There is mounting evidence that the Covid-19 virus, also known as SARS-COV-2, escaped from a research facility in Wuhan, China.

After learning that Chinese scientists have been working on developing a new virus that could be used in chemical weapons for the past ten years, the US State Department is evaluating the risk of a laboratory leak.

In a paper published in Nature in 2015, Chinese scientists updated the scientific community on their success, explaining how they were modifying the spike protein of a bat coronavirus to infect human cells. They characterized the viruses as “a new age of genetic weapons that can be artificially manipulated into an evolving human disease virus, then weaponized and unleashed in a way never seen before” in a paper titled The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons.

They also go into detail about how the viruses should be released, preferably at night or when there was little sunlight and little wind.

In a 2018 update, the researchers announced that they had created four new pathogens and ten new bacteria strains.

The Chinese Communist Party's response to the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus, which included silencing Wuhan scientists and only partial cooperation with World Health Organization investigators, adds to the growing suspicions of a leak.