On Thursday, the US national intelligence director’s office said that they agreed with \u201cthe wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or…<\/b>
\nUS President Donald Trump has apparently balked at his own intelligence agency’s conclusions by claiming that he saw evidence linking the coronavirus to a lab in China.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Trump said that he was confident COVID-19 originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, adding that Washington was „looking at it very, very strongly“.
This was followed by Fox News reporter John Roberts pointing to a previous statement by the office of Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell which, in particular, read that \u201cthe Intelligence Community [\u2026] concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified\u201d.
JOHN ROBERTS: The Director of National Intelligence put out a statement saying they think the coronavirus was naturally occurringTRUMP: Who? R: It was a statement from the DNI officeTRUMP: Oh, he would know that, huh? R: That would be your Director of National Intelligence pic.twitter.com\/ihBTp9HxVe
The remarks came after Grenell\u2019s office said earlier on Thursday that even though they agree with the scientific consensus that the virus was not genetically modified, they’re continuing to investigate how the outbreak kicked off.
China has consistently denied that the deadly virus behind the global pandemic originated at one of its labs, with the country\u2019s Foreign Ministry stating last month that World Health Organisation (WHO) officials have \u201crepeatedly stated that there is no evidence showing the virus was made in a lab\u201d.
According to the WHO\u2019s latest updates, there are already more than three million confirmed coronavirus cases across the world, with at least 217,769 fatalities.<\/p>\n