Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told CNN that he believes coronavirus originally escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. But a team of experts from the World Health Organization, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and several virology experts have said that the evidence supporting this claim is simply not there.
“I don’t think it has somehow arrived of a bat to a human. And at that moment, the virus reached humans and became one of the most infectious viruses we know in humanity for human-to-human transmission, “Redfield told CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta, during an interview recorded in January, to be aired in its entirety on Sunday. “Normally, when a pathogen passes from a zoonot to a human being, it takes time to figure out how to be more and more efficient.”
Redfield, a virologist who led the CDC under President Trump’s presidency, stressed several times that this is just his opinion, not a proven fact. “Now they can give me their opinion,” he said. According to Redfield, the extremely rapid transmission of the ancient coronavirus seeds, in his opinion, indicates that it was probably grown in a laboratory for this exact purpose. “Most of us in a lab, when we try to grow a virus, we try to help it grow better, better, better, better, better and better, so we can do experiments and find out. I combined, ”he said of his theory.
Redfield, however, also said he believes the virus began to spread months earlier than previously thought, perhaps from September or October 2019, a period roughly supported by recent research. The extra time the virus may have spent circulating undetected could help explain how it became “efficient” in transmission, without being “filtered” from a lab.
Dr. Anthony Fauci addressed Redfield’s comments at Friday’s COVID-19 response meeting and suggested that most public health officials disagree. He noted that if the virus had escaped from a laboratory, it would mean that it “essentially entered the external human population, already well adapted to humans.”
“However, the alternative explanation that most people in public health go through is that this virus was actually circulating in China, probably in Wuhan, for a month or more before being clinically recognized in late December 2019.” , said Fauci.
“If so, the virus could have clearly adapted to greater transmissibility efficiency during this time period, up to the time it was recognized. Therefore, Dr. Redfield mentioned that he gave an opinion as a possibility, but again there are other alternatives, others that most people endure. “
Understanding when the coronavirus first emerged is an important piece of the epidemiological puzzle, which scientists around the world, including a WHO team, have been working to nail. A study, recently published in the journal Science, found that “the period between mid-October and mid-November 2019” was “the plausible interval when the first case of SARS-CoV-2 arose in the province. of Hubei “.
“It is very likely that SARS-CoV-2 will circulate in Hubei Province at low levels in early November 2019 and possibly October 2019, but not before,” the study says. But for weeks or months, its prevalence was low enough to avoid warning. “When COVID-19 was first identified, the virus had become firmly established in Wuhan.”
Kristian G. Andersen, director of the translational genomics research institute for infectious diseases at Scripps Research, told CBS News that “none of (Redfield’s) comments on the laboratory theory are” backed by evidence. available “.
“It is clear that not only was he the most disastrous CDC director in U.S. history, where he completely failed in his sworn mission to keep the country safe, but, through his comments, he also shows a total lack of basic evolutionary virology, ”Andersen said. .
Andersen was the lead author of a study published in Nature Medicine last year that found the virus to be a product of natural evolution. In addition, by analyzing public genome sequence data, the scientists “found no evidence that the virus was produced in a laboratory or otherwise designed,” according to a Scripps press release. .
“By comparing available genome sequence data for known coronavirus strains, we can firmly determine that SARS-CoV-2 originated through natural processes,” Andersen said at the time.
W. Ian Lipkin, co-author of the study with Andersen and director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, said there are still many things we don’t know about the virus, including exactly How much time. has been circulating, there is “no evidence” to suggest that it was created in a laboratory.
“Just because we haven’t seen it before doesn’t mean it was created in a lab,” he said. Lipkin noted the ability of coronavirus to replicate in other animals, such as shoots between minks, and the appearance of highly transmissible variants all over the world – “without any modification of a laboratory” – as proof of the contrary.
“The modifications that have been exploited by the virus are not what we would have predicted,” he said, adding, “even if we wanted to design this virus, we would not have known how to do it.”
Lipkin called Redfield’s comments “counterproductive,” especially considering the increase in discrimination and violence against Asian Americans during the pandemic. “We should be moving away from the fingers,” he said.
Andersen and colleagues concluded that the virus probably originated in one of two scenarios. The first is that “the virus evolved to its current pathogenic state through natural selection in a non-human host and then jumped to humans,” according to the press release. The second is that “a non-pathogenic version of the virus jumped from an animal host to humans and then evolved to its current pathogenic state within the human population.”
“We know that bats carry viruses very similar to SARS-CoV-2, so it is plausible that they came directly from bats. Like SARS, it is possible that it came from an intermediate host, which we have not identified,” he said. explain Andersen. “There’s absolutely nothing unusual in the fact that we haven’t found an intermediate host (even if there is one) and that someone who says otherwise just hasn’t read the literature.”
Current CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said at Friday’s briefing that the White House team “expects” a WHO report that “examines the origins of this pandemic and SARS.” -CoV-2 in humans “. But China has not been present with information that may be key to a complete understanding.
Andersen noted that “we do not know the origins (reservoirs) of the majority viruses that infect humans, “including recent ones like Ebola,” and for those of us who have any idea, it can take decades. “
“We know that the first cluster of epidemiologically related cases came from the Huanan market and we know that the virus was found in environmental samples (including animal cages) from the market,” he said. “Any theory of ‘laboratory leaks’ should account for this scenario, which it simply cannot, without invoking a major conspiracy and covering it up by Chinese scientists and authorities.”
His scathing conclusion: “Redfield has no idea what he’s talking about, simple and straightforward. It’s no surprise given his disastrous tenure as CDC director.”