The W.H.O. is concluding its investigation into whether COVID-19 originated from a Wuhan lab instead of the city's wet markets, but critics including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are not convinced about the investigation's legitimacy.
A four-week investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 virus that has taken the lives of over 2.3 million people worldwide is now on its tail-end. According to BBC, the W.H.O.-led investigation concluded that it was "extremely unlikely" that the coronavirus leaked from a Wuhan City laboratory and that more work was needed to truly identify the real source of COVID-19.
W.H.O. is now standing by the report that COVID-19 crossed over to humans from an animal source. W.H.O. team leader Peter Embarek said that based on their initial findings, "The introduction through an intermediary host species is the most likely pathway and one that will require more studies and more specific targeted research."
NBC News reported that according to Embarek, the theory that COVID-19 originated from an accident at the Wuhan laboratory "did not warrant future study," causing the W.H.O. to absolve the lab from any blame for the pandemic, which continues to take a toll worldwide.
Embarek also denied that there was transmission within Wuhan or other parts of China even before the first cases were reported in 2019, despite numerous reports that the coronavirus was already spreading across the globe months before December 2019, Breitbart reported.
Embarek's assertions echo the words of China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, who claimed in 2019 that COVID-19 started elsewhere. This is in line with the communist nation's attempts to suppress the truth when it comes to the pandemic's origins in Wuhan.
The investigation into the Wuhan laboratory and its likelihood that it was the original source of COVID-19 is yet inconclusive as to where the coronavirus truly originated from. While investigators are looking into the transmission from animals to humans, specifically with the coronavirus originating from bats, the W.H.O. has not been able to identify which animals are indeed the original host. According to researchers, while bats and pangolins may be the source of COVID-19, the samples found in them, while similar to COVID-19, were not identical to the coronavirus present in humans today.
As the W.H.O. absolves the Wuhan laboratory as the source of COVID-19, many remain unconvinced about the legitimacy of the organization's investigation results.
One of the most vocal critics is former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who on Tuesday told FOX News that "not a thing" has changed about his suspicion that the coronavirus that continues to ravage the United States indeed came from the Wuhan laboratory.
Pompeo said that there was "significant evidence" that the Wuhan laboratory is the true source of COVID-19 and criticized the W.H.O. for being "corrupt" and "politicized." He accused the W.H.O. of "bending a knee" to Chinese Communist Party General Secretary and China President Xi Jinping.
"I hope they got to see all the data, all the science, into the lab, talk to the doctors, interview them in private, in places where they could actually tell the truth about what took place," Pompeo said. "Not under the supervision of a Communist Party person sitting in the back of the room making sure that they toed the Communist Party line. I look forward to seeing their results. I continue to know that there was significant evidence that this may well have come from that laboratory."
This fuels further criticism against the Chinese government, which according to Breitbart destroyed early evidence of the coronavirus in an effort to "prevent the risk to laboratory biological safety and prevent secondary disasters caused by unidentified pathogens," as told by China's National Health Commission Liu Dengfeng (via Newsweek).
Pompeo is taking a firmer, more combative stance, insisting that Jinping's "feelings" should not be taken into consideration in determining the truth behind the source of COVID-19 and the pandemic that ensued. He said, "We have to confront the challenge that the Chinese Communist Party is presenting to America and to the world."
