The team, led by an international cohort of researchers, said last week that it was "extremely unlikely" that the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), an infectious disease laboratory that has for years conducted experiments with coronaviruses — some of it funded by the U.S. government.The WIV is located just a few kilometers away from the Wuhan city "wet market" identified as the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. A growing number of skeptics have cited the lab's well-documented research into the dangers that bat-borne coronaviruses posed to human beings as a likely source for the virus. But the WHO team concluded that theory should not be considered as an "avenue of future study."
Yet multiple scientists who spoke to Just the News criticized the team's conclusion, arguing that the WHO has not been granted sufficient access to the Wuhan lab to determine if the coronavirus emerged during a lab accident in the last few months of 2019.