The accusation that the COVID-19 virus leaked from a laboratory in the central Chinese city of Wuhan is "more political in nature," Didier Pittet, a leading infectious diseases expert at Geneva University Hospitals, has said.
There is no evidence that the coronavirus leaked from the Wuhan laboratory, Pittet, also inventor of the hand sanitizer, told Russia's Sputnik news agency in an interview published Saturday. People often forget that the first destructive bacteria escaping from a laboratory happened in the United States, he noted.
In March, the World Health Organization issued the first report of its fact-finding mission to China, which came to the conclusion that the possibility of the virus having leaked from a state laboratory in Wuhan was very low. The experts said that there was a high possibility that the virus was transmitted to humans from bats through another animal. However, in May, U.S. President Joe Biden ordered the country's intelligence community to reexamine the origins of the coronavirus and determine whether the disease leaked from a lab or spread from an infected animal to a human. China has denied claims of a lab leak and urged the U.S. and its allies to stop politicizing the issue. Beijing has also affirmed its commitment to finding the truth behind the origins of the virus with global partners based on a scientific approach.
WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 (Xinhua) -- The claim that House Foreign Affairs Committee of the United States concluded the coronavirus leaked from a Wuhan lab was dismissed in a fact-check report by the U.S. news magazine Newsweek on Tuesday.
The report said that the claim came after the addendum of the origins of COVID-19 report had been released, which was the result of a committee minority staff investigation led by Michael McCaul, a ranking member of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee. However, the addendum was not representative of the views of the entire House Foreign Affairs Committee, but of minority Republican staff led by McCaul, according to the report.
(With input from Xinhua)
