Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment have they made of (1) reports that the government of China asked the World Health Organisation to delay issuing a global warning about the COVID-19 pandemic, and (2) the study by the University College London Genetics Institute Emergence of genomic diversity and recurrent mutations in SARS-CoV-2, published on 5 May, which found evidence to suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic started between 6 October 2019 and 11 December 2019; and whether they received any reports to suggest that there were COVID-19 cases in Wuhan in October 2019.

To provide a more comprehensive response to a number of outstanding Written Questions, this has been answered by an information factsheet Science of COVID-19 – note for House of Lords which is attached, due to the size of the data. A copy has also been placed in the Library.