Top US expert Fauci quashes Trump’s theory about origin of coronavirus

Top US epidemiologist Anthony Fauci has disproved US President Donald Trump’s repetitive claims of coronavirus being artificially created in a lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

According to a CNN news report, Fauci – the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and perhaps the single most prominent doctor in the world at the moment – stands definitive on the origins of the contagious coronavirus that has sickened millions around the world.

"If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what's out there now, [the scientific evidence] is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated ... Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species," Fauci said during an interview with National Geographic when questioned about the evidence that the virus was made in a Chinese lab or accidentally released from it.

Thus, Fauci's aforementioned viewpoint on the origins of the disease matters a whole lot more than Trump's opinion about where it came from, read the report.

Read also: China could face ‘consequences’ for coronavirus pandemic, warns Trump

Especially because, outside of Trump and his immediate inner circle, most people in a position to know are very, very skeptical of the Trump narrative that the virus came out of a lab –whether accidentally or on purpose.

Last month, US President Donald Trump had warned China that it should face consequences if it was “knowingly responsible” for the coronavirus outbreak, as he heightened up criticism of Beijing over its handling of the outbreak.

“It could have been stopped in China before it started and it wasn’t, and the whole world is suffering because of it,” Trump told a daily White House briefing.

It was the latest US volley in a war of words between the world’s two biggest economies, showing increased strains in relations at a time when experts say an unprecedented level of cooperation is needed to deal with the coronavirus crisis.