Coronavirus live: UK cases up by 2,000 for second week in a row; G7 calls for expert-led study on origins of Covid | World news

At the press conference to mark the end of the G7 summit in Cornwall, Boris Johnson said the best advice he had remains that he had jumped an animal species.

However, he said it was important to remain open to what exactly had happened.

“At the moment, the advice we’ve had is not to make it look like this particular zoonotic disease is coming from a laboratory,” he said.

“Clearly, any reasonable person would like to keep an open mind about this.”

The final communication at the summit called for “timely, transparent, expert-led and science-based WHO-based Covid-19 origin study 2 on origin”, including in China.

Speaking to reporters at Saturday’s summit, WHO chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Gebreesus said that after nearly 3.75 million deaths worldwide, people deserved to know the source of the outbreak.

“We believe that all hypotheses must be open and we must move to the second phase to really know the origin,” he said.