WASHINGTON, May 2 (Xinhua) — There is “no scientific backing” for the two claims floated recently by some U.S. politicians and media outlets that COVID-19 could be human-made and have escaped from a laboratory, scientists have said.
The piece, written by reporter Ryan Broderick and based on interviews with several scientists, is titled “Scientists Haven’t Found Proof The Coronavirus Escaped From A Lab In Wuhan. Trump Supporters Are Spreading The Rumor Anyway.”
Vincent Racaniello, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University, told BuzzFeed that he wasn’t even comfortable calling the idea that the lab was the source of the outbreak a theory. “A theory is based on results,” he said. “I think it’s driven by politics, frankly.”
“People who are saying it escaped from a lab have no idea what they’re talking about,” he said. “No human could ever design this virus.”
Jeremy Konyndyk, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development, said there is currently no evidence that the coronavirus originated in a lab — either as a deliberate creation or an accidental release.
“There was a very early cluster (of cases) in the (Wuhan seafood) market,” he said, citing the assessment of virologist Trevor Bedford. “If the lab was the point of spillover, you wouldn’t necessarily see the early clustering in the market.”
On April 21, World Health Organization spokesperson Fadela Chaib told a news briefing that “all available evidence suggests the virus has an animal origin and is not manipulated or constructed in a lab or somewhere else.
