Trump’s CDC director Robert Redfield says he believes COVID-19 ‘escaped’ from a lab in Wuhan and started spreading as early as September 2019
- Robert Redfield, the former CDC director, says he believes COVID-19 ‘escaped’ from a lab in Wuhan, China
- He said the virus may have been circling since September 2019
- Redfield made the claims in a CNN interview on Friday but stressed it was his ‘opinion’
- It is the first time Redfield, who was appointed CDC director by President Trump, has stated publicly that he believes COVID-19 originated in a lab
The former director of the CDC, Robert Redfield, says he believes COVID-19 ‘escaped’ from Wuhan lab in China and may have been circling as early as September 2019.
Redfield made the admission in a CNN interview on Friday but stressed it was his ‘opinion’.
It is the first time Redfield, who was appointed CDC director by President Trump, has stated publicly that he believes COVID-19 originated in a lab and not in a wet market.
‘I’m of the point of view that I still think the most likely etiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory… escaped. Other people don’t believe that, that’s fine. Science will eventually figure it out,’ he said.
The former director of the CDC , Robert Redfield, says he believes COVID-19 ‘escaped’ from a lab in Wuhan and may have been circling since September 2019
‘It’s not unusual for respiratory pathogens that are being worked on in laboratories to infect the laboratory worker.
‘That’s not implying any intentionality. It’s my opinion, right? But I am a virologist. I have spent my life in virology.’
Researchers have said the global pandemic is believed to have started when COVID-19 jumped from a bat to a human or through an intermediary species at a wet market in Wuhan.
Redfield, however, says that explanation doesn’t make ‘biological sense’ to him.
‘I do not believe this somehow came from a bat to a human and at that moment in time the virus came to the human, became one of the most infectious viruses that we know in humanity for human-to-human transmission,’ he said.
‘Normally, when a pathogen goes from a zoonot to human, it takes a while for it to figure out how to become more and more efficient.’
He believes it started in a lab that was already studying the virus, which would mean COVID-19 was being exposed to human cell cultures.
It is the first time Redfield, who was appointed CDC director by President Trump, has stated publicly that he believes COVID-19 originated in a lab and not in a wet market. Pictured above are researchers in a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
Redfield was appointed CDC director by President Donald Trump
‘Most of us in a lab, when trying to grow a virus, we try to help make it grow better, and better, and better, and better, and better, and better so we can do experiments and figure out about it. That’s the way I put it together.’
The World Health Organization has previously said the lab theory was ‘extremely unlikely’ but a team of its scientists in Wuhan still have not been able to determine the origin of the virus more than a year into the pandemic.
Redfield also said he believes the virus started circulating in Wuhan as early as September 2019, which is several months earlier than the official timeline.
‘If I had to guess this virus started transmitting in September/October in Wuhan. That’s my view… I’m allowed to have opinions,’ Redfield said.
The United States was first informed of the new virus, then believed to be a mysterious cluster of pneumonia patients, in late December.
US investigators were blocked from going to China in a bid to investigate its origins.