Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator during the Biden administration, revealed Sunday that he now favors the so-called lab leak theory as the most plausible origin story of the pandemic.
“When I went into the White House [in April 2022], my view was, this was almost surely a natural outbreak, maybe a lab leak,” Jha told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“Based on information I learned and based on information I have seen, I have come to conclude that it is more likely to have been a lab leak,” he added.
“Here’s the bottom line: No one in the United States knows for sure. The only people who know for sure are people — officials in China, and we still need transparency and accountability on that,” concluded Jha, the former dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health.
“So that is my best assessment. I’m not suggesting I know for sure, but I’m saying my best assessment is that it probably was a lab leak.”
Later Sunday, Jha clarified that he favors the theory that the lab leak was accidental and that he warmed up to it during his time in the Biden administration.
“Based on strong circumstantial evidence I’ve seen, I think lab leak is much more likely. Not engineered. Not deliberate. Accidental,” he posted on X. “Reasonable people can look at the same evidence and disagree.”
The Wuhan Institute of Virology was a top SARS research lab in the Chinese city where the virus originated, and is known to have studied coronaviruses in bats.
Researchers there are believed to have fallen ill with COVID-19-like symptoms in the fall of 2019 before the outbreak became widespread, according to US intelligence.
Republicans such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) have crusaded against US funding of so-called gain-of-function research, which can enhance the virulence of viruses during the study of them.
Early last year, the CIA concluded in a “low confidence” assessment that a lab leak was the most likely explanation for the origins of COVID-19.
The FBI and Energy Department, which manages a network of labs and research facilities across the US, reached a similar conclusion.
Many scientists still favor the natural spillover theory and the topic remains hotly debated.
