FIND ORIGIN OF COVID-19 OR FACE ANOTHER PANDEMIC, U.S. EXPERTS WARN

The world needs the cooperation of the Chinese government to trace the origins of Covid-19 and prevent future pandemic threats, two leading U.S. disease experts said Sunday.

Information to support the theory that the Sars-cov-2 virus may have escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, has increased, said Scott Gottlieb, a commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration in the Trump administration who now sits on the board of Pfizer Inc.

China hasn’t provided evidence to disprove that theory, while the search for signs that the virus emerged from wildlife hasn’t yielded results, Gottlieb said on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.”

Not knowing how the pandemic started puts the world at risk of future outbreaks, Peter Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, said in a separate TV appearance.

“There’s going to be Covid-26 and Covid-32 unless we fully understand the origins of Covid-19,” Hotez said on NBC’S “Meet the press.”

Almost a year and half after the new pathogen was first detected spreading in a seafood market in Wuhan, China, the precise origins of the virus remain obscure.

In a surprise statement last Wednesday, President Joe Biden called for a renewed investigation into the virus’s emergence.

U.S. intelligence agencies had conflicting assessments of whether it was more likely the virus crossed the species barrier from a natural reservoir or leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Biden said.

Chinese officials have disputed the Wuhan lab theory.

WASHINGTON: