As pressure mounts on China over COVID-19 origins, ex-FDA chief says 'lab leaks happen all the time'

Amid mounting concerns regarding a renewed probe of the origins of COVID-19 in China, former US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said that accidental lab leaks 'happen all the time' and there have been six last known outbreaks of SARS-1 from China.

In an interview with US media, Gottlieb expressed concern about safety protocols at research labs in the US and abroad. He said that a conclusive determination on where the pandemic originated was critical to prevent deadly outbreaks in the future, reported Fox News.

"These kinds of lab leaks happen all the time, actually...Even here in the United States, we've had mishaps, and in China, the last six known outbreaks of SARS-1 have been out of labs, including the last known outbreak, which was a pretty extensive outbreak that China initially wouldn't disclose that it came out of a lab," he said.

This comes as calls for a further investigation into the pandemic has intensified in the past few days.

Earlier, the Wall Street Journal reported that three researchers from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology sought hospital care after they fell ill in November 2019, a month before Beijing reported the first patient with COVID-like symptoms.

The report provides fresh details on the number of researchers affected, the timing of their illnesses, and their hospital visits.

The controversy about COVID-19 origins has resurfaced after the Weekend Australian newspaper revealed that Chinese scientists were thinking about bioweapons, visualising a World War-III scenario.

Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also said earlier this month that the evidence suggests that the coronavirus originated from the lab in Wuhan city of China, adding that the risk of bioweapons and bioterror arising from the region is "very real".

Pompeo told Fox News that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)"covered up" the origins of COVID-19 and that evidence continues to mount despite their efforts to deny access to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

"We worked to get every bit of evidence that we could, we tried to deliver this to the CDC, tried to work with the Chinese. They covered it up terribly," Pompeo said.

Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden has asked the US intelligence community to "redouble their efforts" to come to a conclusion on the origins of COVID-19 and report back to him within 90 days.

"I have now asked the Intelligence Community to redouble their efforts to collect and analyze information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion, and to report back to me in 90 days," Biden said in a statement on the investigation into the origins of COVID-19.

( With inputs from ANI )