China will spark ANOTHER pandemic even worse than Covid as it refuses to learn lessons from outbreak, experts warn

CHINA could sleepwalk the world into another pandemic even worse than Covid unless lessons are learned from this outbreak, experts have warned.

Beijing has been accused of covering up the outbreak, which is thought to have broken out in Wuhan - but the true origins remain unknown.

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Experts and campaigners warned The Sun Online a mix of the ongoing proliferation of wet markets in China, potentially risky lab research, and a lack of transparency could all potentially cause another pandemic.

The world is still trying to pick up the pieces as the virus continues to rage — so far killing more than 3.3million people and still recording more than 700,000 new cases a day.

Pressure is mounting on the Communist Party to learn lessons from the pandemic and come clean - but Beijing continues to try to shift the blame.

It emerged today three scientists at a Wuhan lab were hospitalised as the virus first emerged, according to US intelligence.

Meanwhile, an independent panel ruled the devastating spread of the virus was "preventable" and China was too slow in revealing data about the new disease.

Chinese studies have attempted to claim the virus started elsewhere, Beijing diplomats have pushed conspiracy theories such as claims the virus came from a US bioweapons lab, and the Communist Party has been accused of trying to cover up the early days of the outbreak.

Gray Sergeant, from the Asia Studies Centre at the Henry Jackson Society, told The Sun Online: "When it comes to Covid, the Chinese Communist Party isn’t interest in honesty.

"The regime has imprisoned Zhang Zhan, a citizen journalist who travelled to Wuhan in pursuit of the truth, and punished Australia economically after its government dared to call for an independent inquiry into the origins of the virus.

"It is a worry that Beijing appears to value protecting its own reputation over transparency and accountability.”

Biochemist Milton Leitenberg, a senior research fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland, University of Maryland, said he feared China could spawn another pandemic and has "most certainly not" been honest with the world about the outbreak.

Scientists who believe the pandemic may have begun with a bio-laboratory leak in Wuhan fear another virus could escape from a lab in China. 

Experts have also been demanding the Chinese regime allow an international investigation which will probe further than the World Health Organisation (WHO) in February to stop it from happening again. 

In a letter to the journal Science, David Relman, professor of microbiology at Stanford, said: "Theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable.

"Knowing how Covid-19 emerged is critical for informing global strategies to mitigate the risk of future outbreaks."

It is widely known that China has been carrying out all kinds of dangerous and ethically controversial research which may not be allowed in Western countries. 

As terrible as Covid-19 has been, this is almost certainly not the last pandemic we will face — and possibly not even the worst

Open Letter to Communist Party

It is alleged some scientists attempt to dodge regulation or ethical considerations by "outsourcing" controversial experiments to labs in China.

And the main focus of controversy following Covid is "gain of function" research, in which viruses are souped up to more easily infect humans for research purposes.

They were originally banned in the US in 2014 — but were reintroduced by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2017.

And while questions swirl about the origins of Covid, some have renewed calls for a ban on the risky research.

It emerged last week Chinese scientists were considering weaponising coronaviruses in 2015 — however there is no suggestion Covid is linked to this research.

German scientist Dr Roland Wiesendanger, from the University of Hamburg, told The Sun Online: "Wet markets continue to be a threat. 

"However, an even more severe threat results from risky biotech research with highly pathogenic viruses and the creation of new chimeric viruses with increased transmission capabilities and higher mortality rates for humans."

China is also planning to build up to seven more high security labs — the same as the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) — by 2025 as the Communist state seeks to establish itself as a biotech superpower. 

Dr Wiesendanger said Chinese scientists were carrying out gain of function research, which involves making viruses more virulent and transmissible in people, and this could unleash a new pandemic — potentially with a death rate of up to 80 per cent.

Professor Richard H. Ebright, a senior molecular biologist at Rutgers University and Laboratory Director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology, said: "Coronavirus surveillance research in wildlife and coronavirus gain-of-function research pose high risks for minimal benefit.  

"This is true no matter where the research is performed: in China, in the US, in the UK, in the EU.

"Coronavirus surveillance research in wildlife and coronavirus gain-of-function research in China may have triggered the current pandemic, and, if nations fail to restrict or regulate it, this research in China or elsewhere easily could trigger a future pandemic."

Concerns over a new outbreak in China have spurred eminent scientists in Europe, Australia and North America to sign an open letter calling for the Chinese regime to be more transparent about the origins of the outbreak amid claims of a whitewash.