The top British scientist who played a central role in crushing suggestions that Covid could have originated in a laboratory privately condemned ‘Wild West’ research being carried out in Wuhan, the Chinese city that saw the world’s first outbreak of the virus.

Sir Jeremy Farrar’s damning indictment, sent to two leading scientists in the United States, shows that the head of the Wellcome Trust admitted to fears the new virus emerging in China might have been tied to research even as he coordinated an influential paper dismissing ‘any type of laboratory-based scenario.’

The emails released under Freedom of Information rules also disclose that the then chief medical adviser to the White House, Anthony Fauci, was so alarmed by one unusual feature detected on the coronavirus that he advised colleagues they might need to tip off the FBI and MI5.