https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/07/19/1016005828/new-data-leads-to-rethinking-once-more-where-the-pandemic-actually-began

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Flipboard
• Email

July 19, 20214:39 PM ETHeard onAll Things Considered

MICHAELEEN DOUCLEFFTwitter

New Data Leads To Rethinking (Once More) Where The Pandemic Actually Began

Audio will be available later today.

Back in May, a group of scientists — many at the top of the virology field — shifted the debate about the origins of COVID-19. They published a letter in the journalSciencesaying the lab-leak theory needs to be taken more seriously by the scientific community.

Given the current evidence available, the scientists wrote, the outbreak is just as likely to have originated from a laboratory — specifically the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which studies coronaviruses — as from an infected animal. “We must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data,” they concluded.

Now one of the scientists who signed that letter says new data has come…