WeeklySA_AdminACCOUNTABILITY: Several US government agencies helped to fund lab work that led to the creation of the coronavirus, according to Robert Redfield…
By RT News
Robert Redfield, a former director of the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), has claimed that Covid-19 was artificially developed, and that the US played a “substantial” role in starting the pandemic.
Redfield, who led the agency under the administration of US President Donald Trump, made the claim in an interview that was released on November 14, but only drew media attention this week.
Speaking to author and podcaster Dana Parish, he suggested that the virus was “intentionally engineered as a part of a biodefense program.”
“When you look at the accountability for China, their accountability is not in the lab work and the creation of the virus,” but in their failure to quickly report the incident to health authorities worldwide including the CDC, when they realized the virus was on the loose, he said.
However, the US “role was substantial,” he added. “They funded the research, both from NIH [National Institutes of Health], the State Department’s USAID and the Defence Department.”
According to the former CDC chief, the “scientific mastermind behind the research” was Dr. Ralph Baric, widely regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on coronaviruses.
Redfield suggested that the professor, who works at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was “very involved in this research.”
“I think he probably helped create some of the original viral line”, Redfield said, admitting he did not have any proof. “I think there is a real possibility that the virus’s birthplace was Chapel Hill.”
Redfield previously said the Covid-19 pandemic, which killed more than seven million people worldwide and caused a global economic downturn, most likely started with a lab leak in Wuhan, China, and suggested that the debate on the virus’s origins was “squashed.” He has also criticised the World Health Organization (WHO) for failing to hold Beijing accountable.
One of the prevailing theories of the origin of the Covid pandemic is that the virus was transmitted to humans from an animal, possibly a bat, at a food market. China has maintained that the virus is of natural origin, and has dismissed the laboratory leak theory as an attempt to smear the country for political reasons.
Meanwhile, in September this year, a new research suggested that trade in exotic animals in a market was the most likely conduit for the coronavirus pandemic.
The global coronavirus pandemic “most likely” originated from an exotic wildlife corner at a market in the Chinese city of Wuhan, new research has suggested. The Covid-19 outbreak was first detected at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in December 2019.
According to the authors of a paper published in Cell, an American peer-reviewed scientific journal, the global coronavirus pandemic “most likely” originated from an exotic wildlife corner at a market in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
The Covid-19 outbreak was first detected at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in December 2019.
The researchers added that animals that were “plausible intermediate hosts” of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, were present at the exact site within the market that first cases of the disease were linked to.
The research focused on samples collected by Chinese scientists in January 2020 from drains, cages, and the floor in the southwest corner of the market, where wild animals were known to be sold from a handful of stalls.
