Flinders University Professor Nikolai Petrovsky has discussed the current push underway by global academics calling for a second investigation into the origins of COVID-19.

In an open letter experts are demanding an ‘unrestricted international forensic investigation’ into what caused the pandemic.

The group has provided a list of requirements needed for a proper inquiry and insists ‘structural limitations’ restricted the first probe.

Findings from the first investigation are set to be handed down this month.

Professor Petrovsky is one of the signatories calling for a new inquiry.

“If you were to do a forensic examination of a suspected institution where you thought this virus may have come from, then you’d need full access to all of their records,” Professor Petrovsky told Sky News host Sharri Markson.

“Both their written records, so the laboratory notebooks, all of the records of the different committees that may have made decisions about projects being undertaken,” he said.

“And then all of the electronic databases where the information is often stored on things like viral sequences – so yes, you would have to have very extensive access to all of the records of the relevant institute or university or laboratory”.