good evening. it has been a saturday of sunny spells and isolated showers, but there is more rain to come for sunday. in fact, it's going to arrive tonight through the night, moving up from the south—west, a significant area of low pressure bringing a spell of heavy rain and gale force gusts of wind. ahead of it, particularly in the north—east of scotland and england, we'll have clearer skies and low single figures. but out to the west, a wet and windy sunday morning. at least the strength of the wind will push that rain through at quite a pace, so an improving picture by lunchtime, easing away to a trail of sharp showers. it may well linger in the far north of scotland, and temperatures will be a little subdued. maximum of 10 to m degrees. it looks likely that low pressure will continue to drift away, allowing for a northerly wind to drive in more showers and a cooler feel for the start of the new working week and a new month. so it does mean temperatures will be perhaps just below where they should be for the time of year, but there will be a little more sunshine.

hello, this is bbc news. the headlines... borisjohnson warns the eu that french threats over post—brexit fishing licences, are "completely unjustified". we are going to get old and do the things that matter to both of us, and make sure that we work together on tackling the big issues that face all of us. there is some turbulence in the relationship. france's emmanuel macron says the row over fishing raises questions about britain's reliability. the two leaders will discuss the dispute at the 620 in rome tomorrow. lawyers for prince andrew claim the woman who's accused him of sexual assault is out for �*another payday�*, as they ask a new york court to dismiss the case against him. chaotic scenes as climate activist greta thunberg arrives in glasgow — hours before the start of the cop26 conference.

now on bbc news, what triggered the covid—19 pandemic? the bbc�*s global health correspondent tulip mazumdar looks into the main theories. what exactly happened at the start of this pandemic? where did this virus come from? what happened that brought us into this situation? this is the million dollar question. almost two years since the first cases were reported, we still don't know how my exactly where and when the deadly covid—19 pandemic started. most scientists say the evidence so far points to bats.

at least three of the four seasonal coronaviruses, if not all of them, really originated from the animal world. but a theory about a possible lab incident in the city where the first cases appear to have emerged is being taken more seriously. we must not discount things that have a 5% probability or 1% probability for something as important as this. it could have happened through a lab accident, a lab leak, as you'd say because where it emerged so close to the wuhan institute of virology. coincidence itself is not enough. you need hard evidence. i have reported on many outbreaks of new diseases, including covid—19's distant cousin mers in saudi arabia. there is always politics and pressure. but the blame game is now severely impacting the science. it was china's fault and china's going to pay a big price. scapegoating china cannot whitewash the us. we travelled to rotterdam to meet one of the scientists who was on the who organised mission

to wuhan to study the origins of the pandemic, and spoke to her australian colleague who was also on the controversial trip. the more we argue about the politics, the slower the science takes to get done. more than 4.5 million people have died from this virus. we owe them and their families answers. i am marion koopmans. i'm a professor of virology. i am marion koopmans. i have been part of the origins mission international team because of my expertise on viruses at the human—animal interface and virus transmission studies. i have read about pandemics, i have studied them, i have worked in this field for 30 years but experiencing one is a whole different ball game. professor koopmans has been at the heart of one of the world's biggest unsolved mysteries for over a year.

it is hard. work has been crazy. pressure on my loved ones, like everyone, has been crazy. being part of these kinds of discussions comes at a price. not everyone is happy with the scientist positions on this, so there are threats like every high profile virologists. you have had physical violent threats? oh, yes. nine months ago, professor koopmans flew to the first epicentre of the outbreak with other international experts to try and find out how the pandemic began. wuhan city, home to 11 million people and the most populated city in central china. it prides itself on being an international hub for science and technology. it is also home to a number of traditional chinese wet markets, including the now shut—down huanan seafood market.

this is where the first cluster of covid cases seemed to have emerged. professor koopmans and her team visited the market and believe it could be where the virus jumped from animals into humans. to me, just looking at the market and the layout of the market, with many different stalls, with many different types of animals sold there, some of them live and imported from parts of china where we know the bat populations are most prevalent, and have most of these sars—related viruses. so, from the evidence you have seen, where are you on the origins of this virus? well, most likely it is of zoonotic origin, most likley bats and i think we may need to think about an intermediary animal to explain how it actually got into people. and what evidence are you basing that on? first of all, the genetic evidence.

there is one very close relative of it, ratgis. ratgb was found in horse—shoe bats in china's southern yunnan province back in 2013 after six minors got sick. three of them died. researchers studied and officially identified the virus. it is a 96.2% match with sars—cov—2, and even closer relatives have been found in bat caves in neighbouring laos in the last few weeks. this is significant because both ratgb and the more recently identified banal—52 are the closest known relatives of sars—cov—2, and either or both could have changed enough over the last few decades to be able to jump into humans, probably through an intermediate animal. scientists have pointed to a few prime suspects, including pangolins, mink and raccoon dogs. understanding genetically very similar viruses can help scientists

come up with a timeline for when and possibly where sars—co—v—2 may have spilled over from animals. there's also the fact this has happened a number of times before, most notably with the sars outbreak in china in 2003, and middle east respiratory syndrome or mers which jumped into camels and then into humans in saudi arabia. we have seen similar events, spill—over events, but there also molecular evidence from evolutionary studies that at least three of the four seasonal coronaviruses, if not all of them, really originated from the animal world. so there is really a track record of coronaviruses doing this, so that's why i think it is really still the most likely explanation. my name is dominic dwyer. so there is really a track record of coronaviruses doing this, so that's why i think it is really still the most likely explanation.

my name is dominic dwyer. i'm a medical virologist and infectious diseases specialist. and i have worked in public health virology for many years. professor dwyer agrees that all the current evidence points to a natural animal spill—over. wild animals and farmed animals were for sale in the markets in wuhan before the outbreak. so all of these piece by piece lean towards the animal hypothesis. but it's important to remember that you don't necessarily get a single piece of definitive evidence. it really is often about building block by block to get there. almost all of the scientists i have been in touch with agree that based on the evidence available so far, an animal spill—over is the most likely cause of the pandemic.

but questions also remain over whether that spill—over may have happened by accident at a world—leading coronavirus research centre that happens to be in wuhan. in 2003, china was hit by the deadly sars outbreak caused by the sars—cov—i virus. it spread to four other countries and killed almost 800 people. since then, the wuhan institute of virology had been studying similar coronaviruses, trying to ensure the country was prepared for the next deadly outbreak. the research centre is around 14 kilometres from the huanan seafood market where it is thought some of the first cases of covid emerged. and for some, that is just too much of a coincidence. we don't have certainty. there is significant evidence that this came from the laboratory. china's secrecy, deceptions and cover—up allowed it

to spread all over the world. the trump administration led the charge against china, blaming its leaders and pushing the lab leak theory without providing any evidence. for a while, that hypothesis was put firmly in the realms of conspiracy theory. but some scientists quietly wondered whether under all the inflammatory and at times racist language, the trump administration may be onto something. the view of a lab—related incident was aligned with being a trump supporter, or with his opinion. trump radicalised the whole thing and i think that was the problem. people couldn't really speak out in any kind of support of that view or elements of that view because of being aligned with his ideology. i'm professor devi sridhar at the university of edinburgh medical school. looking at the pieces of evidence we have already in trying to connect the dots, it looks like it was

looking at the pieces of evidence we have already in trying to connect the dots, it looks like it was not bioengineered. it was a natural origin but it could have happened through a laboratory accident, a laboratory leak, as you say, because when it emerged so close to the wuhan institute of virology, which is a level four laboratory, the highest level of experiments with dangerous viruses to humans, and also because we have not had a full audit in transparency from the chinese government, nor found an intermediary animal host that would explain the virus's spill—over. questions have also been raised about what exactly type of research was going on at the wuhan institute of virology, which had received some funding from the us. there have been claims scientist may have been carrying out controversial gain of function studies where viruses are manipulated and potentially made more contagious. yes, i believe those experiments were going on because that is what our field does when we are trying to

understand the biology of viruses. china has denied these claims, calling them pure lies. the spill—over is probably more likely but there is a significant possibility, nonetheless, that the laboratory was involved in some way, shape orform. the international scientists on the joint who mission said they did ask their chinese counterparts whether these gain of function experiments were happening and whether any of the staff at the institute may have accidentally become infected. we didn't hear any evidence of infection in the workers in the laboratory. we didn't hear any evidence of culturing sars—cov—z in that laboratory before the outbreak happened. again with the laboratory leak, if there was evidence to follow, that would be great, let's go down that pathway. if the us agencies had come with more information, terrific, let's get on with it and try and assist them. but in terms of taking it further, you then need evidence to go further.

0n the 9th february 2020, thejoint who china mission reported its findings to the world. it concluded that a spill—over from an infected animal was the most likely triggerfor the pandemic, followed by the possibility that frozen food came from another country into china, contaminated with sars—cov—2, and then a laboratory incident was at the bottom of the list of hypotheses, described as extremely unlikely. what we were hearing as a result of the investigation was that this was definitely not a laboratory—related incident. that is the way it was interpreted. we've got to remember full access was not granted to the team to laboratory records. and thatjust raises some questions as to why the laboratory involvement was rated as extremely unlikely. i think that is over—calling it. i think it is less likely, not extremely unlikely. professor gupta was one of 18

international scientists who publicly criticised the results of the joint mission, calling for a proper investigation which should be transparent, objective, data driven and subject to independent oversight. the who itself also had concerns about the experts' findings. privately, it criticised the official report for not providing specific evidence for saying the lab incident theory was extremely unlikely. out of the four hypotheses they looked at, you could say some were more likely or less likely. dr maria van kerkhove is an infectious diseases expert and the who technical lead for the pandemic. what i know is that international team of amazing scientists, from all over the world, went into better understand the origins of sars—cov—z. they had a mandate to study and to learn from the chinese counterparts what they were willing to share with them. and then you see the report that was out. the report is several hundred pages long and there is a lot

of information on the molecular epee, and the animal's susceptibility, and very little on the lab. it wasn't a mandate to begin with to cover that in full. they didn't have the full capacity to do lab audits. they did in there and they made their assessments. clearly, there is much more work that needs to be done for the lab hypotheses. do you sort of stand by your "extremely unlikely" categorisation? do i stand by it? yeah. i still think... so, obviously the exact wording has gone viral. so, had we known that, then maybe that exact wording would have been a little bit more careful. like just unlikely as opposed to extremely? maybe. if that would take the sting out, yes. i would not mind saying that. both professor koopmans

and professor dwyer told me they would welcome new investigations into the laboratory leak theory if credible evidence was presented. so far, they say, all they have seen is speculation. but the world health organization lead on thatjoint mission to wuhan seems to raise some questions over how a lab leak theory could be defined. he presented a scenario to danish tv where it could be possible for a lab worker to accidentally become infected and trigger an outbreak.

we asked peter embarek of the who for an interview but the agency declined. my name is david hayman and i am a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the london's of hygiene and tropical medicine. there have been several laboratory accidents of these very lethal pathogens in the past. the last cases of sars coronavirus in 2003 had the origin in laboratory accidents in singapore, in taiwan and in china. so laboratory accidents do occur, despite very rigorous measures to try to prevent them from happening. so this isn't as in the conspiracy realms as perhaps it was made out at the very beginning? what's most important to understand is that laboratory accidents can occur. whatever is being manipulated

in that laboratory could leave the laboratory, either in a person who becomes infected, or through some kind of waste material coming out of the laboratory. this pandemic has killed at least 4.9 million people. it's turned our lives as we knew them upside down. health systems have been overwhelmed. and families forced to stay apart. there's always politics and blame games in new disease outbreaks, but there are concerns that the massive impact of covid—19 and the geopolitical infighting is severely hindering the science. china still hasn't shared some of the key data from the earliest days of the pandemic, including information about the very first suspected cases. from the start, its leaders have tried to control the information coming out. what is it like going

into these countries? no country really wants to be investigated in this way, they want their own people to do it. it's not this idea of going in and doing what many people call "parachute research" — just going in and taking the specimens and running. what has to be done is, you have to go into a country, work with the country and together come up with hypotheses — and then conclusions. and remember countries are sovereign and they make their own decisions. there's a difficulty there if the sovereign country wants to shape what the science says. countries often want to shape what comes out. it can be very frustrating — to do an investigation, to understand the source and then not be able to come out and talk about that. governments try to cover up outbreaks because no—one wants to be in a sense responsible for this and to be in some way blamed for this, especially when there's an outpouring of anger. what you see is people saying, "who caused covid?"

it's always them, over there — no—one wants to take the responsibility for what could have happened. but in some ways i think this might have backfired on the chinese government, because instead of actually getting more trust and more cooperation, it seems to have led to more scrutiny and more scepticism over, what are you hiding if you're not willing to be more transparent? the who is the un agency the world turns to during international health emergencies but it can't force its member countries to share information. it's been accused of being too close to china, especially in the early days of the pandemic. remember, this is all politics. the who is a political organisation. its membership relies and its funds rely on governments funding it, essentially, so therefore it is politicised. whatever you want to say. so what's the answer? how do you get to the truth? i'm not sure we ever will, actually. we just have to realise that we don't know. that's the thing. there should be questions over what happened here.

i'm not sure we're going to get any further into that. that dutch tv interview with the who joint studies international lead peter ben embarek also raised questions around whether the international team were pressured into presenting the lab leak theory as extremely unlikely, suggesting that this was the only way it was allowed to be featured in the final report. translation: 48 hours before | we were done with the mission, we still hadn't agreed on whether to mention the lab in the report. my counterpart and i went out into the hallway and discussed how to resolve the impasse, so we could move on. that's when i said we had to include it or we don't have a report. he agreed that we could mention it in the report on the condition that we wouldn't recommend specific studies on that hypotheses, we would just leave it there.

he basically suggested that yes, there was pressure, and that's why it was characterised in that way — and if it hadn't been written and is extremely unlikely, or there is no further investigation needed, then it couldn't appear on that report at all. we made it clear that the lab hypotheses is not off the table but just out of the different ways this pandemic could have started — yeah, that it's on the bottom of our list. do you think the chinese scientist at pressure put on them from that perspective? that's quite likely because, as you say, all sars research has been put under national committee. of course, it's difficult to know exactly who knows what and controls what, but it's clear that there is a chain of command there. but having said that, it was a good group of scientists.

i think there's a question of why do we need to know this and how do we move forward? so i think, politically, obviously there are huge ramifications for the consequences. but, actually, i'm less interested in that and more in scientifically preventing something like this happening again. and we have to know — if it was a lab leak, how do we have better lab procedures? more safety? if it was a natural origin, then we have to look at where it was — was it wet market, farming? was it keeping many animals close together? how do we regulate that so we don't have the next virus emerging? the who has toughened its stance on china, again calling for the country to share crucial data from some of the earliest suspected cases of covid. and it's been more explicit about the need for investigations into a possible lab incident. we are asking actually china to be transparent, open and cooperate. and we need information, direct information, and what the situation of these laboratories were before.

and at the start of the pandemic. chinese officials did not agree to do an interview with us but they did sent us a statement which said china has always supported and will continue participating in science —based origin is tracing. it added, a few politicians in the us and some other western countries are spreading lies that have no foundation in science. it said they are doing this to distract public attention from their own botched responses to the pandemic. and they describe it as pure political manipulation. in amongst all the political backbiting, the un agency says it is trying to bring it all back to the science. its solution? the scientific advisory group for the origins of novel pathogens. what this scientific advisory

will do will set up a framework to articulate what needs to be done each and every time there is an emergence, or re—emergence, one of these high threat pathogens, so there is a standardised approach each time when this happens because unfortunately it will happen again. the who has named the team of 26 scientists from 26 different countries which will make up the body and at the top of their priorities is finding the origins of the covid—19 pandemic. it is exceptionally important that we try to understand the origins of a virus. we have nearly a quarter of a billion confirmed cases around the world. it is likely to be a hell of a lot more. that is a human endeavour to understand a virus that has stopped our whole world. and i would ask everyone, countries, journalists, and everybody else, to create a little space for that discussion to happen, because this is probably, right now, this is our best chance and it may

be our last chance. the professor is one of the selected 26 experts and will once again take on this mammoth task. i think it's critical that we all realise that there are many different places in the world where things like this could happen. so, let's step away from accusations and move towards trying to collaborate, to really figure out what happened. the world can get more of these kinds of outbreaks and we really need to figure out how to prevent them. we have the political will, we have the public's attention, we have financing, we have the scientists coming to the table to make us better, to make all of us be better prepared as we go forward. this is a catalytic moment. the clock is certainly ticking. i am hopeful that we'll get closer to an understanding of the origins of this virus,

whether or not we find exact origins remains an open question. good evening. it has been a seven—day of sunny spells and isolated showers but there is more rain to come on sunday. it will arrive tonight, moving up from the south—west, a significant area of low pressure bringing heavy rain and gale force gusts of wind. ahead of it in the north—east of scotland and england, clearerskies it in the north—east of scotland and england, clearer skies and low single fingers but at the west, a wet and windy sunday morning. the strength of the wind will push it through. an improving picture by

lunchtime, easierway through. an improving picture by lunchtime, easier way to a trail of sharp showers. it will linger in the far north of scotland and temperatures will be a little bit subdued. maximum of ten to 1a degrees. the low pressure will drift away allowing for a northerly wind to driving more showers and a cooler feel there is start to the start of the new working week and month so it means temperatures will be just below where they should be for the time of year but there will be a little more sunshine.

this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. leaders at the g20 summit in rome discuss more covid vaccines for poor countries — and urge iran to return to talks on reviving the 2015 nuclear deal. i'm live in rome where there have been some key pledges from g20 leaders, but tough talks on the climate crisis are still to come. borisjohnson warned the eu, that french threats over post—brexit fishing licences are "completely unjustified". we're going to get on and do the things that matter to both of us, and make sure we work together on tackling the big issues that face the world. there's some turbulence in the relationship.