CNN's Sanjay Gupta breaks with his network and BACKS former CDC director Robert Redfield's 'informed' theory that COVID escaped from Wuhan lab as 'simplest explanation'
- Dr. Gupta in an interview said Dr. Redfield's lab accident theory is 'informed'
- Redfield revealed last month he believes Wuhan lab is likely source of COVID
- CNN sneered at the time that there was 'a lack of clear evidence' for the theory
- But now Gupta reveals that Redfield is 'much more informed' on the subject
- Medical commentator added he believes it is the simplest explanation for origin
- China furiously denies a lab accident and blames animals at a 'wet market'
CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta has broken ranks with his network to voice support for former
CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield's belief that the virus that causes COVID-19 most likely escaped accidentally from a lab in Wuhan.
Last month, Redfield opened up in an interview with Gupta for a CNN special, saying he believes an accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology is the 'most likely' origin for the
coronavirus pandemic.
CNN commentators sneered at Redfield's opinion, with the network in one tweet insisting there was 'a lack of clear evidence' for the lab escape theory, but Gupta backed Redfield up in an interview published on Thursday.
'He's an experienced virologist. He was also head of the CDC at the time this was happening, which means that in addition to everything that we know, he had access to raw data and raw intelligence that was coming out of China,' Gupta told
Mediate's The Interview podcast.
'My point is that it's a much more informed sort of thing for him to be saying than for anybody who may have expertise in virology, because he has a lot more knowledge and information that he has that maybe he can't share, but is informing his opinion,' said Gupta.
'I was not as shocked by what he said as the fact that he said it,' Gupta said. 'There's reason to suspect that this is the origin of the virus.'
'It's a big virology lab right in Wuhan that happened to be studying bat coronaviruses. Just from an Occam's razor standpoint, finding the simplest explanation, it would make sense,' he said, adding, 'We still don't know for certain what the origin is.'
China has furiously denied that coronavirus escaped from its lab, instead placing the blame on a 'wet market' in Wuhan, where live animals could have transmitted the virus to humans.
In his interview, Gupta pointed out that there was also no solid evidence pointing to the wet market as the origin, and questioned the likelihood of that theory.
Redfield made headlines last month with his explosive interview with Gupta, when he said: 'I'm of the point of view that I still think the most likely etiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory... escaped. Other people don't believe that, that's fine. Science will eventually figure it out.'
It's not unusual for respiratory pathogens that are being worked on in laboratories to infect the laboratory worker,' he said.
'That's not implying any intentionality. It's my opinion, right? But I am a virologist. I have spent my life in virology.'
Dr. Anthony Fauci rushed to throw cold water on Redfield's theory, insisting that the virus would have spread more quickly if it had already been exposed to human cells in a lab.
But the virus' rate of spread was evidence cited by Redfield to support his opinion.
A team of World Health Organization-led investigators late last month released their report claiming that a lab leak was 'extremely unlikely' as a cause of the pandemic, but WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus admitted that China withheld crucial data from the team.
The United States, the European Union and other Western countries have all called for China to give 'full access' to independent experts to all data about the original outbreak in late 2019.
One of the team's investigators has already said China refused to give raw data on early COVID-19 cases to the WHO-led team, potentially complicating efforts to understand how the global pandemic began.
Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying insisted that the WHO team had been given full access to the Wuhan lab, and called the country's critics 'unethical.'
CNN's Sanjay Gupta breaks with his network and BACKS Wuhan lab theory | Daily Mail Online
