American senior government official Matthew Pottinger said that latest intelligence indicates that the virus was leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He said that the pathogen had leaked, or it could have been “an accident,” during a Zoom conference.
These comments have been made just before a team of experts from the World Health Organization readies itself to visit Wuhan to find out the origins of the virus. Critics are skeptical about the investigation as the team will not visit the Wuhan Institute, as per their terms of reference.
Mr.Pottinger, who is President Donald Trump’s Deputy National Security Advisor, has been a journalist, a U.S. Marine and an intelligence officer before joining the National Security Council in 2017. He is fluent in Mandarin and was Asia director, before becoming a presidential advisor. His brother Paul is a virologist.
Ian Duncan Smith, a former Tory, attended the meeting and said that the U.S. was “stiffening” its position. Reports indicate that U.S. officials have had talks with a whistleblower, who could be a Wuhan scientist.
Beijing had disallowed journalists from many countries, from visiting the Wuhan Lab or its environs. This reinforced the suspicion that it was “ground zero.” Many people have suspected that the virus was lab grown or escaped from a lab. The “wet market” theory has also been discredited by some.
The origin of the coronavirus is confusing with Beijing trying to take away the focus from Wuhan and the U.S. and other countries believing that the Wuhan Institute is “ground zero.”
