Recently, the US President has claimed that he has received strong evidence that shows COVID-19 originated from a scientific laboratory in Wuhan but he is not "allowed" to reveal what had given him the confidence to make the statement.
Earlier Nobel winning French professor Luc Montagnier and well-known Russian microbiologist Peter Chumakov revealed their doubts on Wuhan lab's role in terms of the origin of the deadly virus. Now an ex-high level staffer for Bill Clinton and then-Senator Joe Biden revealed that the new Coronavirus was likely a Wuhan lab escapee.
Wuhan lab in the focus again
Jamie Metzl, who is now a Senior Fellow at The Atlantic Council, said he is convinced that the novel Coronavirus had escaped from the Wuhan Institution of Virology, in China and the weak security measures of the lab are the reason behind the outbreak which turned into a pandemic within months, reported Forbes.
Metzl said that being a secretive society, the protection of the Communist Party (CCP) is an essential component of the political system in China. He added that "If this was an accidental leak, it seems likely that people connected with the CCP would do everything they could to suppress that information. When you look at their actual behaviour with regards to that lab, it looks like a cover-up to me."
On Thursday, April 28, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that they do not believe the virus was man-made or genetically manipulated. But they have mentioned that US intelligence agency will investigate emerging information about the Wuhan lab to find out "whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a lab in Wuhan."
The Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell said that the entire intelligence community in US has been consistently providing critical support to policymakers and those responding to the new Coronavirus, which originated in China. He also claimed that "The intelligence community also concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not man-made or genetically modified."
Is WHO making things more complicated?
Earlier in a press conference, Trump said he has seen enough evidence to standby his claim against the Wuhan lab which was founded in the 1950s, houses China's first Biosafety Level 4 laboratory. He also mentioned that "I think the World Health Organization should be ashamed of themselves because they're like the public relations agency for China."
While China has rejected the lab theory and criticised the US response to COVID-19, on Friday, Dr Michael Ryan, executive director of WHO's Health Emergencies Program, said at a press conference when asked about the virus' origins that "We have listened again and again to numerous scientists who have looked at the sequence and looked at the virus and we are assured that this virus is natural in origin."
He made the statement as a reply to Trump's recent claims about the Coronavirus and Wuhan lab connection. added that the most important thing, in this case, is to establish what "that natural host for this virus is, and the primary purpose of doing that is to ensure we understand the virus more, we understand the animal-human interface and we understand how the animal-human species barrier was breached."
