Covid was created by Chinese military scientist before Wuhan lab leak as US spies probe bombshell claims, says author

US spies are probing whether Covid was created by a Chinese military scientist before it leaked from a Wuhan lab, according to reports.

Zhou Yusen, who worked for the People’s Liberation Army, filed a patent for a Covid vaccine before the pandemic was declared - and mysteriously died just weeks later.

Zhou, 54, worked alongside researchers at the under-fire Wuhan Institute of Virology - the lab at the centre of the storm over a possible lab leak.

Witnesses claim Zhou was thrown to his death from the roof of the lab - but this hasn't been verified.

Intelligence agencies reportedly suspect that the Chinese army was involved in his death.

And in a new bombshell report, Sharri Markson, the author of What Really Happened in Wuhan, has revealed that the FBI has spoken to a close relative of Zhou on at least two occasions in the last year.

The individual, who now lives in the US, is understood to be a crucial new witness in the ongoing probe into the origins of Covid.

The relative is said to be "nervous", according to Markson's report in the The Weekend Australian.

FBI director Christopher Wray has already publicly said Covid leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

"The FBI has assessed for quite some time that the origins… are a potential lab incident in Wuhan," Wray told Fox News in April.

"You’re talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab that killed millions of Americans."

Zhou reportedly "worked closely" with researchers at the Wuhan lab, including Shi Zhengli - dubbed "batwoman" for her extensive work on bat coronaviruses.

And US investigators reportedly believe Zhou may have known of a lab leak long before it was probed as possibility.

It was revealed in June 2021 that Zhou was the lead researcher on Chinese ­patent documents for a Covid vaccine.

The patent was dated February 24, 2020 - and Zhou died about three months later.

Vaccination experts said it would have been "impossible" to generate the data Zhou's Covid patent unless he had been working on it for at least three months.

Robert Kadlec, the former US assistant health secretary, said vaccine research might have sparked the pandemic.

He told The Weekend Australian: "We think vaccine research ­resulted in the pandemic, that vaccine ­research was the proximate cause.

"Animal-challenge studies used in vaccination are some of the highest-risk research that you can do with an infectious disease agent."

Dr Kadlec said Zhou might have been working with Ben Hu - who was named as the Wuhan researcher who fell sick with Covid-like symptoms in November 2019.

He said the Wuhan ­Institute of Virology was "likely working on a ­vaccine, it looks like they had a bio-containment failure... and that’s the period when Ben Hu and his colleagues fell sick, likely with Covid".

It comes after a secret memo revealed that China ordered scientists to destroy all early coronavirus samples from their labs just two days after the world was first told about Covid.

As the pandemic was starting to explode across the world, panicked Beijing ordered the labs to share their samples with the government - or destroy them "on the spot", the leaked order shows.

The memo - uncovered and translated by US Right to Know (USRTK) - exposes the Chinese government's far-reaching crackdown in the early days of the pandemic.

Intelligence officials said the destruction of early samples hampered efforts to trace the virus' origin - and whether it leaked from a lab in Wuhan.

The Chinese government order is dated January 3, 2020 - two days after the world was first made aware of the coronavirus spreading through China and the Huanan wet market was shut down.

The memo ordered all early virus samples to be shared with high-level institutions designated by the government for testing - and then be destroyed.

Any lab that obtained samples before January 3 was ordered to share them with the government or to destroy them "on the spot".

Beijing vowed to "strengthen law enforcement inspections" and "severely deal with" anyone who ignored the order.

Early samples are vital to piecing together the characteristics of Covid and how the pandemic began.

But Chinese censorship and destruction of material has made it a challenging task for officials probing the origins of Covid.

A mysterious dark database believed to include unpublished samples of data on new viruses and hidden bat samples was also taken offline by China.

Both China and the Wuhan lab have furiously denied any allegations.

But evidence of a lab leak has been piling up over the last two years as scientists, researchers and governments hunt for answers and step forward with evidence.