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Rh As well as using disinformation to limit damage to its own image, China is also accused of spreading disinformation and discord abroad in a bid to damage democracies by suggesting that autocracies have managed to contain the virus whereas democracies have failed to protect their populations. GCHQ told us

China has been very keen to promote its role in health diplomacy, to show where it is helping other nations, to amplify, over exaggerate in some ways its work to counter the virus and to develop vaccines, and so on, but it has equally, at the same time, been putting out disinformation to try and sow seeds of doubt about the origins of the virus, to try and get its audiences in its own terms to believe that China was not at fault with this and to promulgate fake news and conspiracy theories.

Now is not the time to try to reach conclusions about Chinese intent or actions over the origins and development of the pandemic—it is still too soon, as it is likely that more information will come to light about Covid-19 as investigations continue. Initial work *** does appear to support public statements made by the World Health Organization and the Intelligence Community in the United States that the virus was not man-made and China did not deliberately let it spread—beyond cultural issues around failure.

However, those cultural issues—a failure to share information due to a reluctance to pass bad news up the chain, and a tendency to censor press and social media reports considered to present a negative impression—were in themselves extremely damaging to efforts to contain and, later, counter the disease. Attempts by China to suggest that the pandemic originated elsewhere show an unwillingness to change its approach—a concern, given the possibility of future pandemics.

The work which has led to the development of several effective Covid-19 vaccines built on the response to SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) in 2002 and MERS (Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome) in 2012. Chinese research was instrumental in sequencing the virus's full genome and sharing it globally on 11 January 2020. From that point, several teams around the world were able to work independently on potential vaccines, and several had received regulatory approval by early 2021. Further efforts to promote equitable distribution saw the establishment of Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access (or 'COVAX'), which laid the foundation for ongoing vaccine rollout in lower-income countries.

The development of an effective vaccine to combat Covid-19 was considered to be the most crucial aspect in managing the pandemic over the long term. There was a race to be the first to develop a vaccine and therefore work on a vaccine was judged to be highly likely to be targeted by hostile states. At the outset of the pandemic, MI5 judged that "COVID-related intelligence would almost certainly be a high priority. We considered it almost certain they would target global healthcare organisations, especially those engaged in