China has made a startling claim about the origins of COVID-19 following an announcement by a CIA spokesperson, who suggested that the global outbreak was likely caused by a lab leak.
The CIA’s statement came after John Ratcliffe, nominated by Donald Trump as director, officially took on the role earlier this year.
While there is no universally accepted explanation for the outbreak, Ratcliffe made it clear upon taking office that he wanted the CIA to stop remaining on the sidelines and take a more active stance on the issue.
In an interview with Breitbart News, he stated: “One of the key issues I’ve focused on is addressing the threat from China on multiple fronts. This ties back to why a million Americans lost their lives and why the CIA has remained inactive for five years without making an assessment on the origins of COVID.”
“That’s a day-one thing for me.”
Ratcliffe made sure the CIA took a stance on the origins of Covid-19 (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The White House reinforced this claim by launching a web page with the bold title “LAB LEAK,” followed by the statement: “The true origins of COVID-19.”
The website presents several points to support its argument, including the fact that Wuhan is home to China’s leading SARS research lab, which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research. It also mentions that researchers there were reportedly “sick with COVID-like symptoms in the fall of 2019.”
The White House launched a website touting the lab leak claim (The White House)
In response to the U.S. allegations, China published a paper through the official Xinhua news agency, accusing the U.S. of politicizing the issue of COVID-19’s origins. The paper also pointed out that a joint study by the WHO and China had concluded that a lab leak was “extremely unlikely.”
According to CNN, China accused the U.S. of “pretending to be deaf and dumb” and suggested that COVID-19 may have been circulating in the U.S. before the outbreak in China.
In a white paper, China claimed that “mysterious cases of ‘e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury'” in Illinois and Wisconsin, which occurred before the Wuhan outbreak, were actually early instances of COVID. The paper also proposed that cases of the flu in South Carolina from September 2019 might have been COVID, and argued that the virus could have been circulating in the U.S. at a low level as early as December 2019, well before the first official cases were reported.
The paper concluded: “Substantial evidence suggests that COVID-19 might have emerged in the United States earlier than the officially claimed timeline, and earlier than the outbreak in China.”
An official at China’s National Health Commission also argued that the next step in tracing the origin of the virus should focus on the US.
