The Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in the United States, Dr Anthony Fauci, is facing new attacks from Chinese state media after he suggested that there should be more investigations into the Covid-19 origin.

Dr Fauci, who is the chief medical advisor to US President Joe Biden, on 11 May told PolitiFact's managing editor Katie Sanders at a fact-checking event that he is "not convinced" that the SARS-CoV-2 virus developed naturally.

The top American expert said: "I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we find out to the best of our ability what happened."

"Certainly, the people who investigated it say it likely was the emergence from an animal reservoir that then infected individuals, but it could have been something else, and we need to find that out,” he explained and added that this is the reason why he is in favour of any investigation that looks into the origin of the virus.

But after Dr Fauci made these comments, a Chinese state-run media Global Times criticised the American expert.

Global Times editor-in-chief, Hu Xijin wrote an opinion piece entitled "US elites degenerate further in morality, and Fauci is one of them".

The first line of the opinion piece reads: “Because of their anti-China stance, US elites have festered further in morality".

“Even figures like Dr Anthony Fauci, a top expert in public health, have echoed their opinion war against China,” it said.

Earlier, when the data available to the experts were very limited, Dr Fauci said there's no scientific evidence to support the idea that the novel coronavirus was engineered and escaped from a lab.

This lab leak theory first emerged in 2020 and till now experts have not found any solid proof to accept or ignore it.

Since March 2021, there have been several reports that have made scientists and researchers call on further investigating the origin of the SARS-CoV-2.

According to CNN, the former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield said that he still thought that the virus somehow escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

But a team from the World Health Organization (WHO) which went to China and after facing several disruptions, completed their investigation to find out the origin of Covid-19 said that lab leak was "extremely unlikely."

But many experts believe that this investigation is still incomplete as according to WHO, the team was unable to access the lab and was not given raw data.

So, Dr Fauci is just another expert who voiced his support for an intense investigation of novel coronavirus origin to get a solid conclusion which the world deserves after almost one and a half years of suffering.

Covid 19 origin investigation

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