Anthony Fauci, the US’ top infectious diseases expert has said that he is ‘not convinced’ that the COVID-19 virus developed naturally, and backed calls for investigation into ‘what went on in China’ that led to the development of the deadly virus.
During an event – “United Facts of America: A Festival of Fact-Checking” that was held earlier this month, Fauci was asked if he was confident that COVID-19 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, who is the director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) was quoted as saying by Fox News, news agency IANS reported.
“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 favour of any investigation that looks into the origin of the virus… I do not have any accounting of what the Chinese may have done, and I’m fully in favour of any further investigation of what went on in China,” Fauci added.
Fauci’s U-turn?
Fauci, who is US President Joe Biden’s top medical adviser on the COVID-19 pandemic, had, during the initial months of the pandemic, dismissed the theory that COVID-19 originated from China. He had then said that the virus ‘evolved’ in nature and then affected different species and dismissed the theory that it could have been developed ‘artificially’.
In the run-up to the US Presidential elections, the Donald Trump administration had argued that there was a possibility that the virus leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan. Last week, the World Health Organization, however, declared that the lab-leak theory was “extremely unlikely”.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the theory of the virus being developed in a laboratory required further investigation.
