The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intentionally destroyed evidence and covered up news about the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak to the “endangerment of other countries”, a leaked intelligence report has found.

The report, a product of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance of the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zeeland, found that the Chinese regime went about “disappearing” whistle-blowing doctors, censored news about the outbreak, destroyed samples of the virus in laboratories, and refused to hand over samples to international scientists, delaying the ability to manufacture a cure for the virus.

The intelligence dossier, leaked to Australia’s Saturday Telegraph, found that as early as December 31st Communist officials began censoring terms such as “Wuhan Unknown Pneumonia”, “Wuhan Seafood Market”, and “SARS variation”.

On January 1st the wet market in Wuhan was closed and disinfected with bleach, thereby eliminating the possibility of understanding the origin of an outbreak there.

Later that week the health commission in the local Hubei province ordered laboratories to stop testing for the virus, as well as calling for the destruction of any samples of the coronavirus. The following day, the National Health Commission in China ordered that all samples of the novel coronavirus either be moved to secure facilities or be destroyed while introducing a “no-publication order” about the virus.

The report chastised the communist regime for its “deadly denial of human-to-human transmission” and also took aim at the World Health Organization (WHO) for towing the CCP’s line on the virus.

“Despite evidence of human-human transmission from early December, PRC [People’s Republic of China] authorities deny it until January 20th,” the report stated.

“The World Health Organization does the same. Yet officials in Taiwan raised concerns as early as December 31st, as did experts in Hong Kong on January 4th,” the report added.

The report also confirmed that the controversial Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratory had indeed been working on coronaviruses in bats, with one strain being a 96 per cent genetic match for the Covid-19 virus that has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people globally.

The government of Australia is currently placing the likelihood that the coronavirus emerged from the Wuhan lab at around 5 per cent, however, intelligence agencies in the United States consider the possibility much higher and are actively pursuing the theory, with President Donald Trump claiming that he has seen evidence that the virus originated in the Chinese laboratory.

The work that was being conducted in the Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratory by lead scientist Shi Zhengli featured heavily in the Five Eyes report as a point of concern.

In March, Shi said that she “wondered if [the municipal health authority] got it wrong,” adding: “I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China” — believing that it would be more likely for a coronavirus outbreak to occur in southern China where the climate is warmer.

“Could they [coronaviruses] have come from our lab?” she questioned.

The acting Director of National Intelligence, Richard Grenell said the United States still believes that the virus originated in the wet market in Wuhan, but added that the government is investigating other options, including the lab theory.

“The IC will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan,” Grenell said.

Australia has a relationship with the lab that reportedly continues to this day, training and funding Chinese scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a part of the partnership between Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the Chinese Academy of sciences.

On Thursday, the last British governor of Hong Kong, Lord Chris Patten wrote to Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, saying that there is an “overwhelming case” to establish “a multilateral expert mission to Wuhan to find out exactly what happened there”.

“Since Chinese communists are adamant that they have nothing to hide, they would presumably welcome such an inquiry,” Patten wrote.

Follow Kurt on Twitter at @KurtZindulka