An inquiry led by the World Health Organization into the origins of the COVID-19 virus has created more questions and controversy than answers, reports Lesley Stahl on tonight’s 60 Minutes. A forthcoming report now being finalized by an international team of scientists that visited China in January is expected to conclude that the source of the virus is most likely animals infected by bat viruses that were shipped to markets in Wuhan. But critics of the WHO-led study, which found the theory that the virus could have accidentally leaked from a lab in Wuhan ‘extremely unlikely’, say the team was not equipped to conduct a complete and full investigation of the possibility of a lab leak. Stahl’s report will be broadcast on 60 Minutes, tonight at 7 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.
Jamie Metzl, a former NSC official in the Clinton administration and a member of a WHO advisory committee on genetic engineering, is one of more than two dozen experts, including virologists, who signed an open letter earlier this month calling for a new international inquiry. He calls the WHO report a “study tour” and says the visiting scientists saw only what Chinese officials wanted them to see. “Everybody around the world is imagining this is some kind of full investigation. It’s not,” he tells Stahl.
He says China had veto power over which scientists would be allowed to be on the WHO-led mission and its members never demanded access to records, samples, and key personnel from the Wuhan Institute of Virology – the lab China said was not the source of the pandemic, even before the WHO-led team arrived in Wuhan. Metzl also tells Stahl the WHO agreed to ground rules that let the Chinese do most of the primary research. “Imagine if we asked the Soviet Union to do a co-investigation of Chernobyl? It doesn’t really make sense.”
Peter Daszak is a member of the WHO-led team and an expert on how viruses are transmitted from animals to humans. He says the team’s conclusions are fair and well-founded and that they unanimously agreed that the most likely origin pathway is through food supply chains–animals susceptible to bat viruses like rabbits, civets and ferret badgers raised on wildlife farms in Southern China that were shipped to a wet market in Wuhan where the first outbreak occurred. “Something like 75% of emerging diseases come from animals into people. We’ve seen it before,” says Daszak.
He defends the team’s conclusions, which all but rules out the accidental lab leak theory. “For an accidental leak that then led to COVID to happen, the virus that causes COVID would need to be in the lab. They never had any evidence of a virus like COVID in the lab,” says Daszak.
Matt Pottinger is a former deputy national security advisor in the Trump administration. He says you can’t rule out the lab leak theory. He says declassified intelligence information says the Chinese military collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology on projects. “It’s a major lead that needs to be pursued by the press, certainly the World Health Organization. Beijing is simply not interested in allowing us to find out the answers to those very pertinent questions,” he tells Stahl.
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