WHO Calls US Claims About Lab Made Coronavirus Speculative

WHO has called out on the claims made by the United States that the coronavirus made in a Wuhan Lab. The organisation said that it is an ‘evidence-based’ organization and is keen to receive any information about the origin of the disease.

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New Delhi: While the world is looking for a vaccine and cure for the ongoing pandemic, US claims that the virus emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan. According to an IANS report, the US government has "enormous evidence" that the novel coronavirus originated in a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the pandemic erupted last December, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said. "There is significant evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan," Efe news quoted Pompeo as saying to ABC News on Sunday. He went to suggest that it was man-made, saying that "the best experts so far seem to think it was man-made". Although the Trump Administration has not presented any evidence to support this claim so far, Mike Pompeo hasn’t backed his statements with any evidence which he claims to exist. The WHO has called these claims speculative; reports say that the Director of WHO referred to the organization as an ‘evidence based’ organization and is keen to receive any information about the origin of the disease as it is important for the future control of the virus. But according to Mike Pompeo "China has a history of infecting the world," adding that Beijing's laboratories were "substandard" in terms of their cleanliness and their security procedures. However, when Pompeo was reminded that US intelligence services last week issued a formal statement asserting the opposite - that the scientific consensus was that the virus was not man-made or genetically modified - he replied: "That's right. I agree with that." Although China was the origin country of the deadly disease, the US currently accounts for the highest number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the world. Currently, experts are trying to understand how the virus jumped species and infected humans. According to Dr. Maria Kerkhove, a WHO specialist in viruses said that it is important to determine the intermediate host to control future outbreaks say reports.