Experts believed COVID-19 could have been created and leaked from a lab in the early days of the pandemic, but later concluded that the origin theory was not plausible, newly released emails to Dr. Anthony Fauci show.
In an email to Dr. Fauci sent on January 31 last year, Kristian G. Andersen of the Scripps Research Institute told the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director that some of SARS-CoV-2’s features “(potentially) look engineered.” But he also noted that “unusual features of the virus” made up a “really small part” of the genome, quantifying the features as less than 0.1 percent of the genome. “We have a good team lined up to look very critically at this, so we should know much more at the end of the weekend,” Andersen told Fauci
“I should mention that after discussions earlier today, Eddie, Bob, Mike, and myself all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory,” the expert added. “But we have to look at this much more closely and there are still further analyses to be done, so those opinions could still change.” Andersen and his team later published an article in Nature Medicine, which said they believed it was not plausible that COVID-19 was engineered and leaked from a laboratory.
“Although the evidence shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not a purposefully manipulated virus, it is currently impossible to prove or disprove the other theories of its origin described here,” the article read. “However, since we observed all notable SARS-CoV-2 features… in related coronaviruses in nature, we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”