Infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted that he is now “not convinced” that COVID-19 developed naturally, and called for deeper probe into the origins of the virus.
Fauci, the head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), was asked by PolitiFact whether he was confident that the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus developed naturally.
“No actually. I am not convinced about that. I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we continue to find out to the best of our ability what happened,” Fauci said during a Poynter event, “United Facts of America: A Festival of Fact-Checking,” on May 11.
“Certainly, the people who investigated it say it likely was the emergence from an animal reservoir that then infected individuals. But it could have been something else and we need to find that out. So, you know, that’s the reason why I said I’m perfectly in favor of any investigation that looks into the origin of the virus,” he continued.
On the same day, when asked by a doctor during a Senate hearing about whether it’s possible that COVID-19 arose from a lab accident in Wuhan, Fauci responded: “That possibility certainly exists.”
“I am totally in favor of a full investigation of whether that could have happened,” he responded.
Early reports about an outbreak of the CCP virus first appeared in China’s central city of Wuhan in late 2019, when a cluster of cases was reported by state-controlled media to be linked to a local wet market. More than a year later, the origins of the virus remain unknown, though the possibility that the virus leaked from a laboratory at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) is now receiving wider recognition.
Days after the Poynter event, PolitiFact quietly retracted a Sept. 2020 fact check that labeled a Hong Kong virologist’s claim that COVID-19 originated in a lab as inaccurate and a “debunked conspiracy theory.”
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