Professor Marion Koopmans, a prominent virologist providing guidance to the World Health Organization (WHO) regarding the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, stated that the WHO made an error in disregarding the possibility of a lab leak and instead endorsing the frozen food origin theory from China, the Daily Mail reported.
WHO virologist admits it should never have dismissed lab leak theory as being more implausible than China’s ‘frozen food’ story
Professor Koopmans, who leads the Department of Viroscience at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, is part of a team of 12 experts assigned by the WHO to investigate the emergence of the pandemic.
She emphasized that the theory of the virus escaping from a secretive lab in Wuhan should never have been dismissed and stated on the BBC podcast “Fever: The Hunt for Covid’s Origin” that “ranking in retrospect was not smart.” “We shouldn’t have done that,” she added.
After a delegation of scientists visited Wuhan in 2021, the WHO declared that they were keeping all hypotheses open regarding the origins of the virus. They emphasized the importance of following scientific evidence and exploring every possibility in their search for the virus’s source.
The WHO categorized the likelihood of various theories and concluded that the natural-origins theory was the most probable, while labeling a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology as “extremely unlikely” and placing it behind the frozen-food origin theory.
Furthermore, the Chinese government has proposed alternative theories, suggesting that the virus may have originated from a research facility in Maryland, USA, or through the importation of frozen food packaging.
Panel commissioned by WHO affirms zoonotic transmission as primary COVID-19 origin
During an interview with BBC host John Sudworth, Professor Marion Koopmans expressed her view that both the frozen-food origin theory and the lab-leak theory should not be disregarded and remain viable possibilities.
In a previous report, a panel commissioned by the WHO stated that based on the available data, it was highly probable that the coronavirus originated from animals, particularly bats. This conclusion aligned with the findings of the WHO’s investigation in China after their visit in 2021, where the initial cases were reported in December 2019.
“The strongest evidence is still around zoonotic transmission,” Marietjie Venter, chairwoman of the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens, said in June 2022.
