(Washington) The former head of the main federal public health agency in the United States said, in an interview broadcast on Friday, that the coronavirus emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, the cradle of the epidemic.
“If I had to guess, this virus started to spread from September to October in Wuhan, China,” said Robert Redfield, who heads the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) under Donald Trump’s leadership.
“just an opinion”
He added, “I still think that the most likely cause of this pathogen in Wuhan is the laboratory that it escaped from,” stressing that it is “only an opinion.”
Etiology is the study of the causes of diseases.
The former director of the CDC, a specialist in virology, explained that it was “not unusual” to contaminate the respiratory pathogens studied in the laboratory staff.
The hypothesis promoted by Trump
This hypothesis was notably promoted by the previous Donald Trump government, but experts dispatched by the World Health Organization (WHO) to China in January and February dismissed it.
But the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, estimated that “all assumptions are still on the table.”
Wuhan is home to the Institute of Virology, at the center of the controversy over the origin of the epidemic, as it studies many viruses, including the bats’ coronavirus.
The generally accepted theory is the natural transmission of this virus from bats to humans, possibly via another animal.
The first cases reported in Wuhan in December 2019 and January 2020 are linked to an animal market, which is suspected to be the source or amplification of the pollution.
Not an intentional act, says Redfield
This thesis is “meaningless in biology,” as Robert Redfield judged, specifying not to imply that the intentional act was at the origin of the virus’s release.
He said that when moving from animal to human, “it takes a long time for the virus to become more effective in its transmission from person to person.”
Redfield also hinted that the Wuhan institute could have “improved” the virus to make it more effective.
“Suppose I have the Coronavirus that I am working on. Most of us in the lab are trying to develop and improve it to experiment and find solutions.”
A theory rejected by Anthony Fauci
Robert Redfield’s theory was challenged by Anthony Fauci, the famous immunologist and lead health advisor to Joe Biden.
He said that improving the virus in the laboratory is “possible”, but the most likely, and on which most health officials agree, is that (the virus) has passed. Undetected, it spread in the population for several weeks or months, allowing them to adapt well before being identified clinically. ”
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