White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci reportedly walked back comments regarding his position on the COVID-19 lab leak theory Monday.
Fauci told CBS News’ Weijia Jiang he believes that COVID-19 is “highly likely” to have originated naturally before the pandemic began and that this opinion has not changed, Jiang tweeted. Fauci previously testified in a Senate hearing that he believes the “possibility [of a lab leak] certainly exists.”
NEW: Dr. Fauci tells me that his opinion about the origins of COVID-19 have not changed: He believes that it is “highly likely” that it first occurred naturally before spreading from animal to human. Since no one is 100% sure, he’s open to a thorough investigation.
— Weijia Jiang (@weijia) May 24, 2021
Dr. Fauci said that does not mean he believes the virus first emerged in a lab, as some have suggested.
He does not know anything about the three researchers at the Wuhan lab who sought hospital care in November 2019 as reported by the WSJ.
— Weijia Jiang (@weijia) May 24, 2021
Fauci also told Politifact’s Katie Sanders on May 11 that he was “not convinced” when she asked him if he was “still confident that [COVID-19] developed naturally.”
Despite the fact that he repeatedly downplayed the possibility of a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Fauci testified that he is “totally in favor of a full investigation into whether that could have happened,” although he added that he did not “know if we are ever going to be able to prove” how the virus originated. (RELATED: ‘Godfather Of Gain Of Function’: WaPo Columnist Lays Out Fauci’s Possible Role In Wuhan Lab)
Fauci is often criticized for his flip-flops on mask policy, particularly for his suggestion that vaccinated individuals should continue to wear masks. He later admitted that he continued to publicly wear a mask after being vaccinated to avoid “look[ing] like I was giving mixed signals.”
