FACT CHECK: US factsheet twisted to claim COVID-19 was 'Lab-Made' in China
A post that claims that the United States government has almost officially confirmed that coronavirus was leaked from...
By Newsmeter Network Published on 19 Jan 2021 7:47 AM GMT
HYDERABAD: A post that claims that the United States government has "almost officially confirmed that coronavirus was leaked from China's Wuhan laboratory" is viral on social media. The post goes on to say that the US government has confirmed that "COVID-19 is a biological weapon."
"Before leaving, the Trump administration, explodes the info bombāalmost officially confirming that Coronavirus leaked from China's Wuhan laboratory where secret military research was being conducted. In other words, COVID-19 is a biological weapon (sic)," reads the viral post.
Click here and here to view claims.
FACT CHECK:
NewsMeter went through the document linked with the post and found no mention of the US government officially confirming that coronavirus was leaked from China's Wuhan laboratory. (archive)
"The US government does not know exactly where, when, or how the COVID-19 virus ā known as SARS-CoV-2 ā was transmitted initially to humans. We have not determined whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan, China," reads the document.
It further adds that the "US government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019".
However, it does not give any evidence nor does it mention if the researchers had caught the novel coronavirus.
It should be noted that in November 2020, WHO released their findings from a Global Study of the Origins of SARS-CoV-2. The organization says that while bats are a natural reservoir of coronaviruses, it was still early to determine the point of transmission. "Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus," they wrote in the journal Nature.
Evidently, the fact sheet released by the US Department of State was misrepresented to falsely claim that it had "almost confirmed that Coronavirus was leaked from China's Wuhan laboratory".
