A recent report on the origins of Covid-19 by a U.S. government national laboratory says that the hypothesis claiming the virus leaked from a Chinese lab in Wuhan is plausible and deserves further investigation.

People familiar with the classified document informed this.

The study was prepared in May 2020 by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and was drawn on by the State Department when it conducted an inquiry into the pandemic’s origins during the final months of the Trump administration.

The assessment is said to have been among the first U.S. government efforts to seriously explore the hypothesis that the virus leaked from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology along with the dominant hypothesis that the virus spread naturally from animals to humans.

China’s government has repeatedly denied that the virus escaped from a Chinese laboratory and said it is cooperating fully with international efforts to find the pandemic’s origins.

Meanwhile, a new scientific paper says,more than 47,000 live wild animals were sold from wet markets in the central Chinese city of Wuhan between 2017 and 2019 before the first cases of Covid-19 were officially reported from the city.

Researched by international scientists including from China, the paper said that as many as 47,381 animals from 38 species were sold in 17 markets in Wuhan between May 2017 and November 2019, including 31 protected species.

The animals were kept in cages with poor welfare and hygiene, raising health risks.