US National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger has pushed the theory that COVID-19 is a man-made virus produced in Wuhan laboratory in China and inadvertently released, as he talked with British lawmakers via conference call last week, the Daily Mail reported citing former Conservatives leader, Iain Duncan Smith. According to him, Pottinger claimed that Washington has been gathering evidence that only supported this theory, actively peddled not only by the NSA, but also by President Donald Trump himself.
"There is a growing body of evidence that the lab is likely the most credible source of the virus", Pottinger reportedly said.
The NSA also reportedly claimed that one of the former scientists from the Wuhan laboratory was in the US "at the moment", suggesting that they were the source of new evidence presumably proving Washington's theory. Pottinger was among the first among the US officials to peddle "Wuhan lab" theory and he reportedly ordered intelligence agencies to dig for evidence to support his claims.
Beijing Suggests No Single Spot of Origin Theory
Pottinger's conversation with the British lawmakers reportedly took place not long before China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced that Beijing's own probe into the origin of the virus yielded results contrary to the theory peddled by some of the US officials. Wang Yi said that the result of researches suggested that the pandemic was "likely" caused by a series of separate outbreaks around the world.
He noted that China was the first country to report cases of coronavirus in humans and was quick to launch efforts to identify the pathogen, conduct genome sequencing, in order to make the information public and help to battle the emerging pandemic. The minister further noted that Beijing was at the forefront of fighting misinformation, related to the coronavirus, and preserving the "objective narrative and collective memory of the battle against the pandemic".
The World Health Organisation is yet to come up with the official conclusion about the origin of coronavirus as the zero patient is yet to be found. The WHO continues the probe into the matter, but the US preliminary dismissed its results, claiming that the global body is Beijing's puppet and cutting off under this pre-text the organisation's financing amid the raging pandemic.