WHO Head Says Dismissal of COVID Lab-Leak Hypothesis ‘Premature’

The head of the World Health Organization said it was “premature” to rule out the possibility that the novel coronavirus leaked from a laboratory, in comments to reporters on Thursday.

The WHO is “asking actually China to be transparent, open and cooperate, especially on the information, raw data that we asked for at the early days of the pandemic,” director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference. Tedros said there had been a “premature push” to rule out a lab leak as the origin of the coronavirus pandemic.

“I was a lab technician myself, I’m an immunologist, and I have worked in the lab, and lab accidents happen,” Tedros said.

The hypothesis that the coronavirus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, has received renewed scrutiny in recent months, with President Biden ordering the U.S. intelligence community to assess the likelihood of a leak. Wuhan is home to three laboratories that study bat coronaviruses, including the high-security Wuhan Institute of Virology.