The accusation that the COVID-19 virus leaked from a laboratory in the central Chinese city of Wuhan is “more political in nature,” Didier Pittet, a leading infectious diseases expert at Geneva University Hospitals, has said.
There is no evidence that the coronavirus leaked from the Wuhan laboratory, Pittet, also inventor of the hand sanitizer, told Russia’s Sputnik news agency in an interview published Saturday.
People often forget that the first destructive bacteria escaping from a laboratory happened in the United States, he noted.
In March, the World Health Organization issued the first report of its fact-finding mission to China, which came to the conclusion that the possibility of the virus having leaked from a state laboratory in Wuhan was very low. The experts said that there was a high possibility that the virus was transmitted to humans from bats through another animal.
However, in May, U.S. President Joe Biden ordered the country’s intelligence community to reexamine the origins of the coronavirus and determine whether the disease leaked from a lab or spread from an infected animal to a human.
China has denied claims of a lab leak and urged the U.S. and its allies to stop politicizing the issue. Beijing has also affirmed its commitment to finding the truth behind the origins of the virus with global partners based on a scientific approach.
(With input from Xinhua)
