Letters: Covid wouldn’t be the first virus to leak from a lab

The good doctors

Sir: Not all GPs are currently ‘Dr No’ (12 June). I phoned my surgery at 9.30 the other day, expecting to be told the doctor would phone me back in three days’ time, only to be given a face-to-face appointment for 11.30. Everything seemed normal there, apart from the face masks and open windows, and the doctor gave me nearly half an hour of her time. On another occasion when I requested an urgent consultation, I was told to go straight round, and the GP gave me 40 minutes.

During the pandemic I have had one biopsy, two brain scans, two full-body scans, one chest scan, one heart scan, two eye scans and five dilation eye examinations, two x-rays, 16 blood tests, two urine tests, one ear syringe, and seen six consultants face-to-face. The NHS has certainly been there in my time of need, and it has been very much Dr Yes.

Graham Chainey

Brighton

Remember Pirbright

Sir: On 3 August 2007 an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease was confirmed on a farm in Surrey. The following day the Pirbright laboratory of the Institute of Animal Health identified the strain, and went on to discover that Pirbright itself — the only known UK location of the strain — was the likely source. It was later concluded that the virus had most likely leaked out from drainage pipework at the Pirbright facility, contaminating the surrounding soil and then being carried from the site by vehicles. The Pirbright Institute is designated as the World Reference Laboratory for Foot-and-Mouth Disease. The agricultural community has not forgotten this, even if everyone sensible thought that talk of the Covid pandemic originating in a laboratory was pseudoscientific nonsense (‘Not so batty’, 29 May).

David Uren

Spread the borage

Sir: Matthew Parris is, as ever, spot on in his world view and never more so than in his celebration of the maligned borage (‘On looking without seeing’, 19 June).