The theory that the coronavirus was leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology has gained traction in Western media ever since the pandemic started.

After being refuted repeatedly by health experts, the theory was recently revived by an Australian media outlet, the Daily Telegraph, which published a lengthy front-page story about a 15-page dossier, which it says "lays the foundation for the case of negligence being mounted against China."

It alleged that China deliberately suppressed or destroyed evidence of the coronavirus outbreak in an "assault on international transparency" that cost tens of thousands of lives.

The dossier, according to the Daily Telegraph story, was compiled by "concerned western governments" amid an investigation by members of the Five Eyes intelligence agencies, which is an alliance between the U.S., U.K., Australia, New Zealand and Canada. It was soon quoted by national security experts and conservative commentators as evidence for China's "cover-up" of the coronavirus outbreak.

Days after the Daily Telegraph published the piece, Fox News cited it as "the most substantial confirmation of what we have suspected so far." The report was described as a "bombshell" by the Daily Mail.

Yet the credibility of the dossier has been questioned by intelligence officials around the world. According to Reuters, one intelligence source said the document is a research report and the intelligence community did not pay much attention to the report.

People who have read the report said it appeared to be one based on publicly available information including news reports, and it contained no information generated from intelligence gathering, according to Sydney Morning Herald.

When contacted by the Sydney Morning Herald, the journalist who penned the piece, Sharri Markson, insisted that the report was contributed by two western governments, saying: "I will not reveal my sources."

But intelligence shared among Five Eyes nations indicates that it is highly unlikely that the coronavirus outbreak was spread as a result of lab accident, and was more likely to be one from natural human and animal interaction, according to a western diplomatic official who had knowledge of the intelligence interviewed by CNN.

The theory has been rebuffed publicly by Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government's top infectious disease expert, who said that "[The evidence] is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated."

The lab theory has been raised repeatedly by President Trump amid an escalating public campaign to blame China for the pandemic, but he has not provided or detailed any evidence.

The 15-page dossier, which raised much media hype, was suspected to be leaked by a staff member in the U.S. embassy in Canberra, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. But the paper did not reveal the identities of members within the senior ranks of the Australian government and the intelligence community who raised the suspicion, nor did it verify the validity of the suspicion.

The Australian intelligence community has growing concern about promoting the theory when there was "no positive evidence" to back up the theory, according to senior intelligence sources cited by the Sydney Morning Herald. Prime Minister Scott Morrison also denied that the government had strong evidence linking the Wuhan lab to the virus.

"There is nothing that we have that would indicate that was the likely source," Morrison said.

All of those pointed to the problem of circular intelligence – unsubstantiated assertions from single source that get repeated in media reports. Against circumstantial evidence, there is growing rift between the Trump administration and the intelligence community, as well as that of the U.S. allies, on pushing forward the coronavirus lab theory.

Misinformation about the origin of the virus have drowned out reliable health information and the world has much to lose because of that.