Speaking on a London Telegraph podcast, Sir Richard Dearlove lamented that the paper trail of 'gain of function' research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology will likely be gone now.

"We don't know that's what's happened, but a lot of data has probably been destroyed or made to disappear so it's going to be difficult to prove definitely the case for a gain-of-function chimera being the cause of the pandemic," Dearlove noted.

Dearlove, who served as head of Britain's foreign intelligence for five years in the early 2000's, added that China has worked relentlessly to silence scientists who tried to warn the rest of the world.

"The People's Republic of China is a pretty terrifying regime and does some things we consider unacceptable, and extreme in silencing opposition to the official line of the government," he said.