US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he supports the theory that the COVID-19 virus spread around the world due to a leak in a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
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“From my point of view, based on what I know, it’s likely that China was playing with the virus, someone picked it up in a laboratory, then it spread across China, and then around the world,” Rubio said.
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In January, the CIA began to support the theory of a laboratory virus leak.
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Earlier, following a two-year investigation, US congressmen stated that the coronavirus was most likely of laboratory origin and had spread as a result of a leak, according to a published report by lawmakers. The report notes that “the COVID-19 virus is most likely to have originated in a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan.”
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The United States had previously publicly announced an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus, after which the Wuhan Institute in China became the focus of close attention of the American government.
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Subsequently, the States accused this research institution of refusing to cooperate and provide the requested documentation. The US intelligence community has made it clear that it is developing two versions of the origin of the coronavirus – a leak from a Chinese laboratory and a natural infection of humans from an animal.
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In March 2021, WHO published the full version of the report of the organization’s international expert group on a visit to Wuhan to establish the origin of the coronavirus, in which experts called its leakage from the laboratory “extremely unlikely.” The report also stated that the new type of coronavirus was most likely transmitted to humans from bats through another animal. Experts have added another version of the origin of the coronavirus – direct transmission to humans from an animal – to the list of hypotheses “from possible to probable.” The WHO mission also called a “possible” version of the transmission of the virus through chilled foods.
