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Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claims China misled WHO on COVID-19 origins

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Mike Pompeo, former Secretary of State under the Trump Administration, claimed China misled the WHO on where COVID-19 originated.

In a Fox News interview, the former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told host Bill Hemmer that he was aware of “significant evidence” that the Coronavirus originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. While Pompeo did not go into great detail, he did say he believed the World Health Organization was “bending a knee to General Secretary Xi Jinping in China.” 

Early Tuesday morning, the WHO investigated the site of the alleged origin of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China. NBC News reported that, “It is ‘extremely unlikely’ that the coronavirus leaked from a lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where Covid-19 first emerged, according to the head of a team of experts that on Tuesday released the first details of its fact-finding mission into the virus’s origins” [FOX].

Dr. Peter Ben Embarek of the World Health Organization said in a press conference Tuesday, “Our initial findings suggest that the introduction through an intermediary host species is the most likely pathway and one that will require more studies and more specific targeted research”. Pompeo responded to the WHO’s investigation citing, “I continue to know that there was significant evidence that this may well have come from that laboratory”. The Trump Administration made an executive decision to pull out of the World Health Organization in 2020, alleging that they were a pawn in the release of the COVID-19 pandemic. Pompeo is suspicious of the WHO’s investigation at Wuhan, saying, “I don’t believe it’s the case that they got access that they needed. I know they didn’t get access they needed in a timely fashion” [NBC].

Dr. Embarek made it clear that the World Health Organization was not interested in furthering the investigation into the Wuhan lab. “Embarek said the possibility that the virus was manufactured in a lab would not be encouraged as an avenue for further study and speculated that bats were a probable source of transmission.” The Chinese Communist Party has continued to endorse the idea that COVID-19 can be transmitted by frozen foods, and even blamed United States troops for the outbreak, citing that the virus may have originated in a Maryland lab.

China’s U.S. ambassador called on the World Health Organization to investigate the United States, in an interview with CNN. Meanwhile, the Biden Administration has refused to take sides one way or another. Ned Price, the spokesperson for the State Department said Tuesday, “Rather than rush to conclusions that may be motivated by anything other than the science, we want to see where that data leaves us, and based on that, we’ll come to a conclusion” [NY Post].

ARTICLE: ETHAN FINN

POLITICS EDITOR: CARSON CHOATE

PHOTO CREDITS: BLOOMBERG

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