Two inquiries are ‘cloaked in secrecy’, WHO lets Beijing vet investigators and it appoints British scientist with links to Wuhan.

Explosive emails from a group of top-level scientists and Government doctors in the United States reveal one suggested Covid-19 could have originated from human activities rather than arising naturally from animals.

Another asked if it might have been deliberately engineered.

The documents also show that a key letter sent early in the pandemic from America’s top scientists to the White House had a line deleted that suggested the virus could have been ‘an unintentional release from a laboratory’.

These revelations come as evidence of China’s cover-up grows, alongside fears the World Health Organisation, widely criticised for its failure to challenge Beijing at the start of the pandemic, is letting the regime dictate its inquiry into the origins.

The WHO has allowed China to vet scientists taking part in the probe, while also appointing to its ten-strong team the British charity chief Peter Daszak.