Dr. Anthony Fauci believes that it is “entirely conceivable” that COVID-19 originated from a virus that killed three miners after a visit to a bat-infested cave in China in 2012.
The coronavirus that killed the miners in 2012 is the closest known relative to SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19. On Thursday, Fauci called for China to release the medical records of the miners, as well as the records of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) researchers who the Wall Street Journal reported last month fell ill with an unknown COVID-like illness in November 2019.
“I would like to see the medical records of the three people who are reported to have got sick in 2019,” Fauci told the Financial Times. “Did they really get sick, and if so, what did they get sick with? … The same with the miners who got ill years ago . . . What do the medical records of those people say?”