Fauci dismisses Trump theory of virus originating in Chinese lab

Washington: Top US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), made the comments in an interview with National Geographic.

While answering a question regarding evidence that the virus was made in or accidentally released from a lab in China and also claimed by President Donald Trump, Fauci said, "If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats, and what's out there now is very, very strongly leaning toward this (virus) could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated -- the way the mutations have naturally evolved," reported Xinhua news agency on Tuesday.

"A number of very qualified evolutionary biologists have said that everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that it evolved in nature and then jumped species," he said.Asked about the possibility that the virus was found outside the lab, then brought back and escaped, Fauci said, "That means it (virus) was in the wild to begin with."