China’s top doc George Fu Gao ‘not optimistic’ COVID origins will be revealed

The top official in charge of China’s COVID-19 response doesn’t think the destructive virus’ origins will ever be revealed, according to a report.

Dr. George Fu Gao, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Telegraph that he is “not optimistic” that information will be publicly shared because the globe is too invested in the subject.

“The whole area is too sensitive. There is too much politicization. We must focus on science,” he told the Telegraph, an argument China has repeatedly landed on.

The county last made that claim in February after a US report said COVID-19 likely leaked from a Wuhan bio-lab before killing nearly 1,119,000 in the US and 6,900,000 worldwide, according to WHO data.

Though cagey, Gao — who is thought to know more about the origins of the disease than any other scientist — did claim that there is no evidence COVID lived on an intermediate animal species between sprouting on bats and jumping to humans.

“I, too, thought there must be an intermediate host — a reservoir — but now I’m not so sure. It’s possible there is no animal reservoir,” he told the outlet.

Last month, a published report using genetic sequences gathered by Gao and his CDC team found “convincing evidence” COVID-19 was spreading widely at Wuhan’s Huanan seafood market in January 2020 — the wet market initially believed to have sparked the pandemic.

The data show that genetic material from raccoon dogs and other animals was present in COVID-positive samples at the market when the disease first boomed.

Though the scientists wrote it is not clear how the virus made its way to the market, they said COVID could have been “introduced by a human or cold chain product” or an animal.

The findings deliberately negate statements Gao made in May 2020, when he claimed samples collected from animals in the market in early January of that year showed no traces of the virus.

“At first, we assumed the seafood market might have the virus, but now the market is more like a victim,” Gao said at the time.

“The novel coronavirus had existed long before.”