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US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci answers questions, as President Donald Trump looks on, at a coronavirus task force briefing at the White House. Photo: Reuters

Fauci dismisses coronavirus lab origin claims as ‘circular argument’

  • Leading US health official says evidence strongly indicates virus originated in the wild and jumped species
  • The well-regarded doctor has also warned of a second wave of infections in the US later in the year
Anthony Fauci, the leading US expert on the coronavirus pandemic, pushed back on Tuesday against discussions that a lab in China was the origin of the virus, a theory promoted by US President Donald Trump’s administration.

In an interview with National Geographic, Fauci, a member of Trump’s White House coronavirus task force, said the virus likely originated from an animal source. He described the possibility that the virus had accidentally escaped from a lab as a “circular argument”.

“If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what’s out there now, [the scientific evidence] is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated – the way the mutations have naturally evolved,” he said.

“A number of very qualified evolutionary biologists have said that everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species.”

Fauci also said there was a risk of a second wave of infections in the US later in the year, as states were beginning to reopen businesses, if the country was not prepared with enough tests and supplies for its health system.

“If we do it correctly, then we would be able to blunt and diminish the daily rate of infections in this country as we get into the summer,” he said. “But I don’t think there’s a chance that this virus is just going to disappear. It’s going to be around and, if given the opportunity, it will resurge.”

Wuhan lab conspiracy theories shine spotlight on super-secure facilities

The debate over the origin of Covid-19 has sparked a war of words between Beijing and Washington, even as scientists have largely rejected speculation that the virus spread from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a high-security centre in the central Chinese city of Wuhan where the first cases were reported late last year.

There has also been mounting pressure – including from the US, Australia, and European Union – for an independent inquiry into the origins of the virus in China, which experts say likely originated from a natural animal reservoir.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed on Sunday there was “enormous evidence” that the virus came from the Wuhan lab, which specialised in coronavirus research, without providing information to back up the assertion. Chinese state media has aggressively attacked Pompeo over his comments.
The US intelligence community said last week the Covid-19 virus was “not man-made or genetically modified”, but that it would continue to examine intelligence to determine whether its origin was from an animal source or an accident at the lab.

Fauci was asked whether it was possible the virus could emerge somewhere else, but be brought to the lab and then leaked. “But that means it was in the wild to begin with. That’s why I don’t get what they’re talking about [and] why I don’t spend a lot of time going in on this circular argument,” he said.

Despite the Trump administration’s allegations, British and Australian intelligence sources have said there is no evidence the coronavirus originated from the Wuhan lab, even with persistent concerns about China’s lack of transparency during the pandemic.

Sources cited by British newspaper The Guardian on Monday contradicted White House claims about the links between the virus and the Wuhan institute, and Australian intelligence sources told The Sydney Morning Herald they had not been provided with strong evidence the lab was the source of the outbreak.

The Daily Telegraph, an Australian tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, earlier highlighted a 15-page dossier by intelligence agencies of the Five Eyes network – made up of the US, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Britain – showing China had destroyed evidence of the coronavirus outbreak.

But sources told The Guardian and The Sydney Morning Herald the document in question was based on open-source material, or information already available in the public domain, rather than classified information from the Five Eyes intelligence network.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Tuesday the virus “most likely” originated from a wildlife wet market in Wuhan, but did not rule out Trump's lab-as-origin theory.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Fauci dismisses coronavirus lab origin claims as ‘circular argument’
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