Reuters A former French government official who oversaw safety standards at the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s maximum security laboratory ahead of its opening has dismissed the theory that Covid-19 escaped from the institute, as a growing clamour of voices lends credence to the previously fringe hypothesis. In his first interview with English-language media, Gabriel Gras, a virology researcher and biosecurity expert who was employed as a technical expert at the French embassy in China, said he did not believe SARS-CoV-2 originated or escaped from the WIV. Gras said he had “no doubt” about the safety of the institute’s biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory, the first of that security specification to be built in China, after supervising its construction and accreditation by way of a collaboration between the French government and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.