A statement from U.S. intelligence agencies debunked a conspiracy theory about the origin of the novel coronavirus, concluding that it was "not manmade or genetically modified."
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released the statement Thursday.
The conclusions were consistent with a worldwide scientific consensus that includes the World Health Organization (WHO).
"All available evidence suggests that the virus has a natural animal origin and is not manipulated or constructed virus," said WHO Spokeswoman Fadela Chaib at a briefing on April 21. "The virus most probably has its ecological reservoir in bats," she added.
Health workers in protective gear look out from a tent constructed for COVID-19 tests, outside the Brooklyn Hospital Center in Brooklyn, New York City, the U.S., March 27, 2020. /Reuters
Political weapon?
The announcement came as the Trump administration continues to push an unproven allegation that virus may have escaped from a Chinese government research lab in Wuhan, the then epicenter of the outbreak in China.
China's Foreign Ministry dismissed such claims. "Officials of the WHO have repeatedly said there's no evidence the virus was made in a lab, and many experts have also said the claim lacks scientific grounding," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said.
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Meanwhile, aThe New York Times report revealed that senior Trump administration officials have pushed American spy agencies to hunt for evidence to support the unsubstantiated theory, current and former American officials were quoted as saying.
Some analysts are worried that the pressure from senior officials could distort assessments about the coronavirus and be used as a weapon in an escalating battle with China, according to the report.
The director of one of the Chinese labs in question rejected the idea in an interview with CGTN. Yuan Zhiming of the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory told CGTN that: "There is absolutely no way that the virus originated from our institute."
In correspondence sent to one of world's leading science journals, Nature Medicine, leading virologists from the U.S., the UK and Australia expressed skepticism of the genetic manipulation theory. Having analyzed the pathogen's genome, they said: "We do not believe that any type of laboratory based-scenario is plausible."
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. expert on infectious disease and a member of Trump's Coronavirus Task Force, cited this article at a White House briefing. "A group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists looked at the sequences there and the sequences in bats as they evolve," Fauci said, referring to the genome mapping included in the Nature Medicine article. Having looked at the mutations, Fauci dismissed the manmade virus theory, saying the genome: "... is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human."
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(With input from agencies)