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The Pirbright Institute is a research institute in Surrey, England, dedicated to the study of infectious diseases of farm animals. It forms part of the UK government's Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. The Institute employs scientists, vets, PhD students and operations staff.

So I doubt there is some nefarious element at work here. Only natural as coronaviruses have been around for quite sometime now.

Human coronaviruses are common throughout the world. Seven different coronaviruses, that scientists know of, can infect people and make them sick. Some human coronaviruses were identified many years ago and some have been identified recently. Human coronaviruses commonly cause mild to moderate illness in people worldwide. Two newer human coronaviruses, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV, have been known to frequently cause severe illness.

So this is just a new version being discovered, and is exactly why they would be naturally working on something that may be able to combat them.

Since the Chinese seem to eat anything, it is not unusual that most of these start in China.