Enormous evidence to suggest COVID came from a Chinese lab: Pompeo

There is ‘enormous evidence’ to suggest that the coronavirus pandemic originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday (May 3).

He said, “there is enormous evidence that this is where it began,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.” However, he declined to say if the virus was ‘intentionally released.’

Pompeo, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, told ABC that he agreed with a statement from the US intelligence community which concurred ‘with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not man-made or genetically modified.’

“I think the whole world can see now, remember, China has a history of infecting the world and running substandard laboratories,” Pompeo said. He said early Chinese efforts to downplay the coronavirus amounted to ‘a classic Communist disinformation effort. That created enormous risk.’

US President Donald Trump too was critical of China’s ‘role’ in pandemic, which has infected nearly 3.5 million people and killed more than 2,40,000 around the world.

Trump, who repeatedly called it the ‘Chinese Virus,’ said in the past week that Beijing concealed ‘important information’ on the COVID-19 outbreak and urged the nations of the world to make Beijing ‘accountable.’

Unconfirmed reports said Trump had tasked agencies concerned to find out more about the origins of the virus. The spread was initially blamed on a Wuhan market selling exotic animals but now the theory of lab transmission is doing the rounds.