Five Eyes leaked dossier raises eyebrows on Chinese whistle-blowers disappearance

Washington: China lied about the human-to-human transmission of coronavirus, made whistle-blowers disappear and refused to help nations develop a vaccine, a leaked intelligence dossier reveals.

The 15-page document drawn up by the Five Eyes security alliance brands Beijing's secrecy over the pandemic an 'assault on international transparency' and points to cover-up tactics deployed by the regime.

It claims that the government silenced its most vocal critics and expunged any scepticism about its handling of the health emergency from the internet. China has roundly come under fire for suppressing the scale of its early outbreak which did not afford other nations time to react before the disease hit their shores.

Five Eyes - the pooling of intelligence by the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - laid bare its scathing assessment of the Xi Jinping administration in the memo obtained by the Australian Saturday Telegraph.

The smoking gun file shows that Western intelligence agencies have found evidence the virus spawned in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, close to the wet market China says it came from.

Intelligence officials found a series of cover-ups by the Chinese government including the 'deadly denial of human-to-human transmission', the silencing or 'disappearing' of researchers who tried to raise the alarm, the hiding or destruction of evidence of the outbreak and a refusal to hand over live virus samples to other countries to enable them to develop vaccines.

The newspaper also reported a partnership between Chinese and Australian labs where research was carried out relating to a bat-derived coronavirus that could not be cured. China's cover-up of the seriousness of the outbreak can be traced back to early December, the dossier reveals.

China had 'evidence of human-human transmission from early December,' the intelligence found, but continued to deny it could spread this way until January 20.

'Despite evidence of human-human transmission from early December, PRC authorities deny it until January 20,' it states.

'The World Health Organisation does the same. Yet officials in Taiwan raised concerns as early as December 31, as did experts in Hong Kong on January 4.'

The report reveals China then started censoring news of the virus on search engines from December 31, deleting terms such as 'SARS variation, 'Wuhan Seafood market' and 'Wuhan Unknown Pneumonia.'

On January 3, China's National Health Commission then reportedly ordered virus samples be destroyed and issued a 'no-publication order' about the virus.