<p>A top U.S. official reportedly told politicians from around the world last week that a “growing body of evidence” points to a Chinese lab as being the point of origin for the coronavirus pandemic.</p>
<p>&#8220;Matthew Pottinger, who is President Donald Trump&#8217;s respected Deputy National Security Adviser, told politicians from around the world that even China&#8217;s leaders now openly admit their previous claims that the virus originated in a Wuhan market are false,&#8221; The Daily Mail <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9106951/Lab-leak-credible-source-coronavirus-outbreak-says-government-official.html">reported</a>. &#8220;The comments, which were made during a Zoom conference with MPs on China last week, come as a team of experts from the World Health Organization prepare to fly to Wuhan to investigate how the pandemic began.&#8221;</p>
<p>The Mail reported that Pottinger pointed to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is only several miles away from the wet market in Wuhan, saying, “There is a growing body of evidence that the lab is likely the most credible source of the virus.”</p>
<p>Pottinger is a former officer in the U.S. Marines, is fluent in Mandarin, and is a former journalist for Reuters and The Wall Street Journal.</p>
<p>Pottinger reportedly noted that officials believe that the coronavirus escaped through a “leak or an accident,” adding, “even establishment figures in Beijing have openly dismissed the wet market story.”</p>
<p>Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory Party leader who attended the meeting, said the remarks showed that the United States was &#8220;stiffening&#8221; its position on the coronavirus pandemic originating in a lab accident.</p>
<p>&#8220;I was told the US have an ex-scientist from the laboratory in America at the moment,&#8221; Smith said. &#8220;That was what I heard a few weeks ago. I was led to believe this is how they have been able to stiffen up their position on how this outbreak originated.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;The truth is there are people who have been in those labs who maintain that this is the case,&#8221; Smith continued. &#8220;We don&#8217;t know what they have been doing in that laboratory. They may well have been fiddling with bat coronaviruses and looking at them and they made a mistake. I&#8217;ve spoken to various people who believe that to be the case.&#8221;</p>
<p>The Mail also highlighted the reaction of Sam Armstrong, communications director at the Henry Jackson Society foreign policy think-tank. &#8220;With such a senior and respected intelligence official speaking in support of this claim, the time has come for the British Government to seek both answers about and compensation for Covid-19,&#8221; Armstrong said.</p>
<p>Some scientists have pushed back on the theory that the coronavirus leaked in a lab accident. Wuhan Institute of Virology Vice Director Yuan Zhiming told <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/inside-wuhan-lab-center-coronavirus-storm-n1236254">NBC News</a> in August that scientists at the facility first received samples of the virus after it had already begun to spread. &#8220;I have repeatedly emphasized that it was on Dec. 30 that we got contact with the samples of SARS-like pneumonia or pneumonia of unknown cause sent from the hospital,&#8221; said Yuan. &#8220;We have not encountered the novel coronavirus before that, and without this virus, there is no way that it is leaked from the lab.&#8221;</p>
<p>Meanwhile, China has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/china-now-claims-coronavirus-probably-did-not-come-from-wet-market-virus-not-found-in-animal-samples-there">openly said</a> for many months that the coronavirus probably did not come from the wet market.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/pompeo-says-enormous-evidence-virus-came-from-wuhan-lab">Top U.S. officials</a> and &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/americas-intelligence-agencies-are-coming-to-same-conclusion-on-coronavirus">most of the 17 intelligence agencies</a>&#8221; have reportedly thought that the coronavirus pandemic started with a Chinese lab, but believe that it was an accident.</p>
<p>&#8220;Late last year, foreign journalists were barred from visiting an abandoned copper mine in the southwest of the country, where the closest known relative of Sars-Cov-2 was discovered in 2013 by Chinese virologists and taken back to the Wuhan laboratory. A bat research team had samples taken on a recent visit to the mine confiscated,&#8221; The Sunday Times <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/biological-weapons-lab-leaked-coronavirus-claims-us-official-tfw829wxh">reported</a>. &#8220;Dr. Shi [Zhengli, a virologist at the institute and known as the &#8216;bat woman&#8217; for her work related to coronaviruses] discovered RaTG13 in the mine after six workers in Tongguan died from an unknown illness in 2012. She took the viral samples back to Wuhan for further analysis.&#8221;</p>

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Top U.S. Official: ‘Growing Body Of Evidence’ Coronavirus Leaked Out Of Chinese Lab