Clearing noting his claim is an opinion, former U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield is sharing where he believes COVID-19 originated.
Though there is a lack of clear evidence, Redfield told CNN he believes COVID-19 most likely “was from a laboratory” in Wuhan, China, that “escaped.”
He, however, noted, “Science will eventually figure it out.”
“It’s not unusual for respiratory pathogens that are being worked on in a laboratory to infect a laboratory worker,” Redfield said.
Additionally, Redfield suggested COVID-19 could have originated in Wuhan in September/October of 2019.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta said to Redfield, “These are two significant things to say, Dr. Redfield.”
Redfield also said, “I do not believe this somehow came from a bat to a human.” The former CDC director added that it does not make “biological sense” for one of the “most infectious viruses that we know in humanity for human transmission” to transmit from animals to humans so well.
Watch Redfield’s comments below:
Despite a lack of clear evidence, former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said in a CNN documentary clip released Friday that he believes the novel coronavirus began transmitting in fall 2019 and that the virus may have originated in a lab in China. https://t.co/r4CpbrNsBl pic.twitter.com/GZl1BbM5ZO
— CNN This Morning with Kasie Hunt (@CNNThisMorning) March 26, 2021
The U.S. has reported over 30 million COVID-19 cases and there have been more than 125 million cases reported across the world.
A World Health Organization (WHO) team said in early February that it is unlikely the coronavirus originated in a lab, according to The Associated Press.
“The findings suggest that the laboratory incidents hypothesis is extremely unlikely to explain the introduction of the virus to the human population,” Peter Ben Embarek, a WHO food safety and animal disease expert, said.
He said that leaks from labs are extremely rare and after the WHO team reviewed the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s lab they found it would be hard for something to escape from it.
The WHO team believes the virus most likely was transmitted from an animal to humans. As The Associated Press reported, “Embarek said the initial findings suggest the most likely pathway the virus followed was from a bat to another animal and then to humans, adding that would require further research.”