The top Chinese official who led Beijing’s COVID-19 response admits he can’t rule out that the deadly virus leaked from a lab.
“You can always suspect anything. That’s science,” Dr. George Fu Gao, who was China’s equivalent of Dr. Anthony Fauci, told the BBC when asked about the ongoing theory about his own nation’s scientists.
“Don’t rule out anything,” he told the podcast “Fever: The Hunt for Covid’s Origin.”
The global pandemic has killed 7 million people globally, according to the World Health Organization.
The scientist’s admission, no matter how vague, is stunning given how forcefully Beijing has always denied the possibility that researchers at the now-notorious Wuhan Institute of Virology may have leaked the virus while working on similar bat diseases.
At the time, China called it “a lie created by anti-China forces,” even blaming the US for its origins.
In fact, the Chinese Communist Party took the theory seriously, Gao admitted for the first time.
“The government organized something” to investigate, he said. “That lab was double-checked by the experts in the field.”
Gao, who was head of China’s Centre for Disease Control, could only say that he “heard” the lab was given the all-clear, without revealing how certain he is.
“I think their conclusion is that they are following all the protocols. They haven’t found [any] wrongdoing,” he suggested.
The lab-leak theory originated soon after the novel coronavirus emerged in late 2019 in Wuhan, the Chinese city at the heart of researching almost identical diseases.
The lab’s head researcher, Shi Zhengli — dubbed “bat woman” — “lost sleep for a day or two” when the mysterious, deadly illness first overwhelmed Wuhan, a collaborator, Wang Linfa, told the BBC.
She feared there may have been “a sample in her lab that she did not know of, but has a virus, contaminated something, and got out,” Wang said.
However, Shi claims to have ruled out those fears, and that there is “zero chance” she would hide it, Wang told the podcast.
Still, the theory remains the most prominent one held by US intelligence.
In February, FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed that the bureau “has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan.”
Last month, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe called it “the only explanation credibly supported by our intelligence, by science and by common sense.”
There have been more than 766 million COVID cases worldwide, according to the WHO.
