This story was updated on April 21st, 2020.
By Otto Rodriguez
Miami-Dade Health
President Donald Trump said Wednesday the United States government is investigating whether the coronavirus, known as COVID-19, originated in a State lab in Wuhan, China.
At a White House press conference Trump said: “We are doing a very thorough examination of this horrible situation that happened.”
The Chinese state-backed Wuhan Institute of Virology has repeatedly dismissed rumors that the virus has been artificially engineered at its facility.
During Wednesday’s briefing, an almost daily occurrence since a national public health emergency was declared in March, Trump said he had spoken with Chinese President Xi Jinping about the virus origin but did not reveal details of the conversation. “I just don’t want to discuss, it’s inappropriate right now,” he added.
The same day, Fox News published an article penned by Bret Baier and Greg Re citing US government sources that said that the virus originated in a Wuhan laboratory, not as a biological weapon, but to show that China’s capabilities to combat diseases are equal or greater than those of the United States.
The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that US officials had recently warned about risky research on coronavirus from bats at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. These new reports coincide with an announcement by President Trump to halt temporarily funding the World Health Organization over its handling of the coronavirus outbreak.
On April 4, China observed a rare national day of mourning for the people who died in Wuhan because of coronavirus and labeled them as “martyrs”.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on April 21 that the science suggests the virus more than likely came from an animal and not a lab. Fadela Chaib, a spokesperson of WHO, told USA Today “it’s probable, likely, that the virus is of animal origin.”
