During an interview with CBS’ “The Takeout” podcast recorded on Wednesday and released on Thursday, White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said there is “no evidence” to indicate COVID-19 originated from a lab leak or an infected lab worker.
Fauci stated, [relevant remarks begin around 5:50] “Well, you must always leave all possibilities open and address it with an open mind. But if you look, historically, at how outbreaks have occurred: Ebola, swine flu, SARS-CoV-1, MERS, and those other outbreaks, the circumstances under which this occurred, namely, in a region of the world where we have that animal-human interface, that it is more likely, in my mind, and in the mind of most of the evolutionary virologists, that it is more likely a natural occurrence of a jumping of species in the environment, in the animal-human interface. However, since you have not yet definitively proven that, you must always keep an open mind to the possibility of what you just mentioned, a laboratory leak or someone who was out doing research in the field who got infected while working with a pathogen in the laboratory. Those are all possibilities. There is no evidence to indicate that that’s happened. But you still must leave an open mind.”
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