Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leading infectious disease expert in the U.S., has urged China to release the medical records of nine people whose illnesses could provide crucial clues into whether COVID-19 first surfaced as a result of a lab leak, according to the Financial Times.
A U.S. intelligence report published in April said several researchers at China's Wuhan Institute of Virology became ill in November 2019 and had to be hospitalized, providing new information about the severity of their symptoms and potentially fueling further debate about the source of COVID-19.
"I would like to see the medical records of the three people who are reported to have gotten sick in 2019. Did they really get sick, and if so, what did they get sick with?" the report quoted Fauci as saying.
The director of the Wuhan National Biosafety Lab, which is part of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, has since denied the intelligence report.
"I've read it, it's a complete lie," director Yuan Zhiming told Global Times. "Those claims are groundless. The lab has not been aware of this situation, and I don't even know where such information came from."
The virus's origins are being investigated by U.S. intelligence agencies, who are still looking into reports that researchers at a China virology laboratory in Wuhan became seriously ill in 2019, a month before the first COVID-19 cases were reported.
However, Chinese scientists and officials have consistently rejected the lab leak hypothesis, claiming that the virus could have been circulating in other areas before it reached Wuhan and could have even entered China via imported frozen food shipments or wildlife trading.
According to the Financial Times, Fauci believes the virus was first transmitted to humans via animals, and that even if the lab researchers did have COVID-19, they could have contracted the disease from the general population.
During the Worldwide Threats Hearing in April, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told lawmakers that "the intelligence community does not know exactly where, when or how COVID-19 virus was transmitted initially," an assessment that has not changed, said two people briefed on the intelligence.
The latest intelligence, according to the sources, reinforces the belief that the virus most likely originated naturally, through animal-human contact. However, this does not rule out the possibility that the virus was the result of an unintentional leak from the Wuhan Institute, which was conducting coronavirus research on bats.
