Dr. Deborah Birx, a former White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator under Donald Trump, told CNN on Tuesday that there was an effort to squash scientists suggesting the COVID-19 virus started in a lab in Wuhan, China.
"I think early on, people did take very definitive sides, and it did divide along party lines, and we're still suffering from that four years later," Birx told CNN's Kasie Hunt, who asked if there was any substance to the argument that the lab leak theory was suppressed.
"I do think it happened. If you look at what people said about Bob Redfield and how they disparaged him as a scientist because he wanted to bring forward the lab leak potential," the former top medical official said.
Redfield, a former director of the CDC, suggested early on that the COVID-19 pandemic started in a lab, which was widely dismissed by the media and other prominent health officials.
FAUCI DENIES SEEKING TO OPPRESS COVID-19 LAB LEAK ORIGIN THEORY
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, denied during a hearing on Capitol Hill on Monday that he suppressed the theory.
Birx told Hunt on Tuesday, "And I think the reason he felt he [Redfield] needed to bring it forward to push, was to push against this, ‘it had to be this way.’ Because we didn‘t know, and we knew we would never know. I mean, we knew as SARS that China was not transparent. We knew with the second SARS, China was not transparent, so we were not going to get an answer, but that shouldn‘t have held us back 4.5 years later from both ensuring that we protect against lab leaks and we protect that public."
She added that lab leaks "definitely" happen and noted, "people got infected with HIV in the lab."
"And so we have to put different rules and regulations and guidelines in place to protect the public. We can do that. We‘ve done that before," Birx said.
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Birx also discussed the House Oversight Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic hearing on Monday.
"The one thing good coming out of the hearing, I believe, and I think Dr. Fauci made this point over and over again, we’re at a place where we can definitively say we do not know if it was lab or zoonotic, from animals. We do a lot of zoonotic work. It’s our opportunity to really decide as a global community how we’re going to control laboratory experiments in a way that protects the public," she said.
Fauci, during the hearing on Monday, also defended vaccine mandates for students, employees and the military.
"Vaccines save lives. It is very, very clear that vaccines have saved hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions worldwide," he said.
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"In the beginning, it clearly prevented infection in a certain percentage of people but the durability of its ability to prevent infection was not long. It was measured in months," he added.
Fox News' Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.
