COVID man-made, former Wuhan-based scientist says

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COVID is a man-made virus, a scientist who worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China says.

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Scientist Andrew Huff, who worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, blamed authorities for the “biggest U.S. intelligence failure since 9/11,” Britain’s the Sun is reporting.

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The lab has been involved in debates about the origins of COVID.

Huff, an epidemiologist, said in his recent book, The Truth About Wuhan, that the pandemic was the result of the U.S. government’s funding of coronaviruses in China.

He said China’s gain-of-function experiments were carried out with lax security.

“Foreign laboratories did not have the adequate control measures in place for ensuring proper biosafety, biosecurity, and risk management, ultimately resulting in the lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Huff said in his book.

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There are experts who believe that the virus could have escaped through an infected scientist or the improper disposal of waste at the lab.

Huff is a former vice-president of EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based nonprofit that studies infectious diseases.

The group has been studying different coronaviruses in bats for more than a decade.

Huff, who worked at EcoHealth Alliance, said the nonprofit helped the Wuhan lab put together the “best existing methods to engineer bat coronaviruses to attack other species” for many years.

“Foreign laboratories did not have the adequate control measures in place for ensuring proper biosafety, biosecurity, and risk management,” Huff wrote in his book.

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“China knew from day one that this was a genetically engineered agent. The U.S. government is to blame for the transfer of dangerous biotechnology to the Chinese. I was terrified by what I saw. We were just handing them bioweapon technology.”

EcoHealth Alliance issued a statement regarding Huff’s book, saying “The actual “truth about Wuhan” is:

“1) Mr. Huff was employed by the EcoHealth Alliance from 2014 to 2016. However, reports that he worked at or with the Wuhan Institute of Virology during that time are untrue. He was assigned to a completely different project working on computer-based algorithms to assess emerging disease threats.

2) Mr. Huff alleges that EcoHealth Alliance was engaged in gain of function research to create SARS-CoV-2. This is not true.

3) Mr. Huff makes a number of other speculations and allegations about the nature of the collaboration between EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Given that he never worked at or with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, his assertions along these lines cannot be trusted.

4) Mr. Huff claims that SARS-CoV-2 emerged as a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology based on research conducted there on bat coronaviruses and, further, that this research was related to U.S. intelligence gathering efforts. This is not true.”