VIDEO: Ex-CDC director believes coronavirus 'escaped' from lab
NEW YORK (1010 WINS) – The former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said he believes the coronavirus pandemic originated in a lab in China.
Dr. Robert Redfield, who served as CDC director from 2018 to 2021, made the assertion in a new interview with CNN's Sanjay Gupta.
"I am of the point of view that I still think the most likely etiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory—you know, escaped. Other people don't believe that. That's fine. Science will eventually figure it out," Redfield said.
"It's not unusual for respiratory pathogens that are being worked on in a laboratory to infect the laboratory worker," he said.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has experimented extensively with bat coronaviruses, is less than nine miles from the wet market where it's believed the outbreak may have originated, according to Axios and CNN.
A World Health Organization team said it was "extremely unlikely" the coronavirus came from a lab, and there is currently no hard evidence that the virus originated in one.
Redfield said it "doesn't make biological sense" that the virus jumped from another species to a human and then quickly became so transmissible between humans.
"That's not implying any intentionality, you know. It's my opinion. But I am a virologist. I have spent my life in virology," Redfield said. "I do not believe this somehow came from a bat to a human and at that moment in time the virus that came to the human became one of the most infectious viruses that we know in humanity for human-to-human transmission."
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, does not subscribe to the lab theory. Asked about Redfield's comments Friday, Fauci said Redfield was "giving an opinion" about the origin of the outbreak.
"Again, there are other alternatives, others that most people hold by," Fauci said.
