Fox News anchor Bret Baier said his sources tell him the truth about the origins of the novel coronavirus outbreak will be revealed to the public by the fall.
There is a delay, the veteran journalist told Fox News colleague Jesse Watters while discussing the story he helped break, because of China’s place in the supply chain.
“My sources are saying in six months time, all of this will be out in the open. There’s a lot of holdback to the story, they think, because of China’s control of some big elements like PPE [personal protective equipment] and other things we have seen that China is slowing up getting to the U.S.,” he said in an interview that aired Saturday evening.
His comments come at a time of a rising sense of urgency, particularly among Republicans, about China’s grip on the supply chain of items including medicines, hospital masks, and other medical supplies, and during a push to urge companies to bring operations back to the United States or other Western countries.
Fox News reported last week the U.S. intelligence community is carrying out a full-scale investigation into the theory that the novel coronavirus first detected in China in late 2019 may have originated in a Wuhan government lab through an accidental escape or inadvertent infection.
Intelligence officials said for now they have ruled out the coronavirus being a genetically-engineered Chinese bioweapon, and it was more likely a natural strain studied at the Wuhan Institute of Virology before making its way into the Wuhan population.
Yuan Zhiming, vice director of the laboratory in Wuhan, denied the coronavirus leak theory on Saturday, telling a Chinese state television network: “There is no way this virus came from us.”
Top officials have publicly acknowledged the coronavirus origin theory is something the Trump administration is at least considering. President Trump told reporters on Friday that “a lot of strange things are happening” in terms of the origins of the novel coronavirus and said the U.S. is trying to determine whether it came from a laboratory.
Fox News reported U.S. officials are certain the Chinese government went all-out in an effort to conceal the viral outbreak and cited sources who expressed confidence that the World Health Organization either played a role in a cover-up or looked the other way.
