Fact Checker: Did Coronavirus escape from a Chinese lab?

The coronavirus or COVID-19 has been spreading across the globe for months and while scientists’ understanding of the virus has improved greatly, a definitive answer to its origins remains unknown.

The majority of scientists and the WHO believe the virus originated in nature and was passed on to humans via an intermediary animal.

But there have also been other, more outlandish theories on where it originated.

One such theory is that COVID-19 was caused by an accidental leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Fox News, US president Donald Trump and US secretary of state Mike Pompeo have been some of the fiercest advocates of the “Wuhan lab-leak” theory and claim to have “significant” evidence to prove it.

But despite their promises as of yet they have not provided any— and in that absence many have struggled to accept it.

The WHO’s technical lead on Covid-19 Dr Maria Van Kerkhove and President of the US EcoHealth Alliance Peter Daszak are just a few of the many experts who agree the virus occurred naturally and was not leaked.

Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has said the best evidence points to the virus not being made in a lab, saying “this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated … Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that it evolved in nature and then jumped species.”

Members of The Five Eyes intelligence network have too dismissed the theory as unlikely, with intelligence sources telling The Guardian newspaper that there is no current evidence to support it.

All available evidence shows that the novel coronavirus is natural in origin and not man-made.

But until a definitive answer is found, researchers will continue in their search to answer this important question using facts, not politics, to come to the most logical conclusion.

So what do you think?