Robert Redfield, who headed the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has claimed that COVID-19 did not evolve naturally and that it escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China. Redfield was the CDC under Trump administration during the onset of the pandemic. He was speaking to CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta to discuss the pandemic and share his opinion about the origin of the Covid-19 virus.
During the interview, Redfield said “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.” His claim gives credence to the theory that the virus was released from the Wuhan institute of Virology – China’s only lab allowed to study pathogens.
Redfield acknowledged those who do not agree with the theory. “Other people don’t believe that. That’s fine. Science will eventually figure it out”, he said. He also added the he does not believe the virus “came from a bat to a human”.
To back this, Redfield says that how quickly it became a pandemic could shed light on how it was not naturally occurring. He said that a virus requires time to acclimatise to human bodies and to cause major transmission.
He then said that he believed the virus was spreading much earlier than December 2019 in September/October itself. The Chinese authorities had claimed the virus originated in some Western country and traveled to China. Though it allowed a WHO team of scientists to visit Wuhan, the access was limited and they were not allowed to investigate at the locations the team wanted. The WHO team was also not allowed to collect data and samples from Wuhan.
Aayush Pal 
Palak Dogra 
Saisha Kamla Dudha