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The former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention believes “SARS-CoV-2” originated from a lab in Wuhan, China, according to an interview released by CNN on Friday.
Robert Redfield told the network that he believes that the COVID-19 outbreak, responsible for killing 2.7 million people globally, was artificial.
“I’m of the point of view that I still think the most likely etiology of this pathology in Wuhan was from a laboratory — escaped,” said Redfield, who led the CDC during the height of the pandemic. “Other people don’t believe that. That’s fine. Science will eventually figure it out.”
Researchers believe the deadly and highly-transmissible strain of Coronavirus behind the global pandemic mutated from a virus that infects animals — specifically, bats — to one that sickens humans.
“I do not believe this somehow came from a bat to a human and at that moment in time, that the virus came to the human, became one of the most infectious viruses that we know in humanity for human-to-human transmission.”
Redfield said usually when a virus jumps from animals to humans, “it takes a while for it to figure out how to become more and more efficient in human-to-human transmission.”
Many including the former CDC director believe the virus was somehow “released” from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is the only lab in China authorized to study the most dangerous known pathogens.
“It’s not unusual for respiratory pathogens that are being worked on in a laboratory to infect the laboratory worker. That’s not implying any intentionality,” Redfield said. “It’s my opinion, right? But I am a virologist. I have spent my life in virology.
A recent probe by the World Health Organization concluded that it was “extremely unlikely” that the virus stemmed from the lab and said it likely originated in animals before it spread to humans.
