Dr. Anthony Fauci spoke out over the weekend to call for an investigation into China as he admitted that he is not confident that COVID-19 “developed naturally.” This marked a major reversal from his earlier stance, as he previously dismissed theories that COVID-19 emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

In a new interview, PolitiFact editor Katie Sanders asked Fauci whether he is “still confident that [COVID-19] developed naturally?”

Close

“No, actually,” Fauci shockingly replied. “No, I’m not convinced about that. I think that we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we find out to the best of our ability exactly what happened.”

“Certainly, the people who’ve investigated it say it likely was the emergence from an animal reservoir that then infected individuals, but it could’ve been something else, and we need to find that out,” he added. “So, you know, that’s the reason why I said I’m perfectly in favor of any investigation that looks into the origin of the virus.”

This came one year after Fauci dismissed these kinds of theories about COVID-19 not developing naturally in an interview with National Geographic.

“If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats, and what’s out there now is very, very strongly leaning toward this [virus] could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated—the way the mutations have naturally evolved,” Fauci said back in May of 2020. “A number of very qualified evolutionary biologists have said that everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that it evolved in nature and then jumped species.”

When asked if it was possible that the virus escaped the lab after scientists brought it inside, Fauci replied, “But that means it was in the wild to begin with. That’s why I don’t get what they’re talking about [and] why I don’t spend a lot of time going in on this circular argument.”

Last week, Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee released a report revealing there is “significant circumstantial evidence” suggesting COVID-19 escaped from the Wuhan lab.