The outgoing director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, has accused China of failing to cooperate with an investigation into the origins of COVID-19.
Speaking on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Fauci was asked whether he has seen any of the data that Beijing has handed over after being asked to do so by the United States as part of a probe. The health official explained that he had yet to see such data, before accusing China’s ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) of acting secretive and raising suspicions throughout the globe that they may have covered up the origins of the pandemic.
“No,” Fauci responded when asked if he had seen any of the data. “You know, one of the problems is that—and this is historic, it goes way back to bird flu, the H5N1, the H7N9, the original SARS-CoV-1—is that the Chinese, not necessarily the scientists that we know and we have dealt with and collaborated with productively for decades, but the whole establishment of political and other establishments in China, even when there’s nothing at all to hide, they act secretive, which absolutely triggers an appropriate suspicion of like, ‘What the heck is going on over there?’”