Former FDA commissioner says lab leaks 'happen all the time' amid COVID-19 origin scrutiny

Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said Sunday that accidental lab leaks “happen all the time” amid mounting concern regarding the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"These kinds of lab leaks happen all the time, actually," Gottlieb said. "Even here in the United States, we’ve had mishaps, and in China, the last six known outbreaks of SARS-1 have been out of labs, including the last known outbreak, which was a pretty extensive outbreak that China initially wouldn’t disclose that it came out of a lab." Calls for further investigation of the pandemic’s origins have intensified in recent days. Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported three researchers at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology displayed symptoms severe enough to seek hospital treatment with symptoms consistent with COVID-19 in late 2019.