Former CDC Chief Believes COVID-19 Escaped From Wuhan Lab

Members Of Coronavirus Task Force Hold A Briefing At The White House

(Photo : Getty Images/Tasos Katopodis)
WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 19: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Commissioner Robert Redfield speaks during a White House Coronavirus Task Force press briefing in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on November 19, 2020 in Washington, DC. The White House held its first Coronavirus Task Force briefing in months as cases of COVID-19 are surging across the country ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.

Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield stated he thinks COVID-19 began becoming prevalent in the Chinese city of Wuhan in September or October 2019. He remarked it is only an opinion and that he is allowed to have opinions.

Robert Redfield, who spearheaded the CDC during the first year of the novel coronavirus pandemic, told CNN that was broadcasted on Friday that he thinks this scenario is more likely than other alternatives. Alternatives include that the virus was ignited after transmission from animals to humans or in a live-animal market.

Redfield Thinks COVID-19 'Escaped' From Wuhan Lab

According to Redfield, the most probable origin was "from a laboratory -- you know, escaped. Other people don’t believe that. That’s fine. Science will eventually figure it out,” reported Bloomberg.

Redfield thinks the coronavirus began infecting people much earlier than first believed. He added it is common for respiratory pathogens that are being tackled in a lab to infect the lab worker, reported Fox Carolina.

It is also not uncommon for that type of research to occur in that city of China. Wuhan is a prominent center for viral studies in China. This includes the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has experimented substantially with bat coronaviruses.

Redfield proffered no explanation for this idea other than to provide his opinion as a virologist. He does not think the virus could have been so contagious when it was transmitted directly from an animal to a person. Instead, he argues it was manipulated in a research laboratory in Wuhan to become more infectious. Then, he believes, it was accidentally released by a worker in September or October 2019, a few months prior to coming to public attention, reported USA Today.

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The theory of emergence from a Chinese lab has had a World Health Organization (WHO) official tout it as "extremely unlikely." Redfield also did not think it made "biological sense" that the virus could spread so readily between humans if it originally came from an animal. He remarked that he does not think this somehow came from a bat to a human.

The former CDC chief added he was “not implying any intentionality." He also does not allege China of purportedly releasing the virus. In other words, he is not implying that COVID-19 was developed or spread intentionally.

Former President Donald Trump, whom Redfield served, frequently displaced blame to China for the COVID-19 pandemic. He called it the “China Virus” and even “Kung Flu,” which were deemed as offensive descriptions that have been condemned as helping to provoke a barrage of attacks on Asian Americans.

According to Redfield, at that point, the virus was transmitted to a human being, becoming one of the most infectious viruses that we know in humanity for human-to-human spread. "Normally, when a pathogen goes from a zoonosis to human, it takes a while for it to figure out how to become more and more efficient in human-to-human transmission. I just don't think this makes biological sense."