COVID-19 lab leak theory driven by ideology, not science: US columnist

WASHINGTON - The lab leak theory to explain COVID-19's origins is losing credence as more findings are surfacing, Michael Hiltzik, a US columnist with The Los Angeles Times, said on Thursday.

Claiming the virus leaked from a lab is not only a matter of "conjectures", but also probably wrong guesswork, Hiltzik wrote in a column piece published in the newspaper.

"Virtually from the outset, the lab leak theory was driven by ideology, not science," Hiltzik said, citing multiple new findings which point to it jumping from animals to humans rather than being man-made.

One of the studies co-authored by 21 virologists from the United States, Canada, Britain and other countries concluded that, as Hiltzik quoted in the piece, "there is currently no evidence that SARS-Cov-2 has a laboratory origin."

The lab leak theory has deceived many people exactly because it applies the "vocabulary" of science as a technique targeting the susceptible public, he said.

That said, finding the virus's origins is crucial for helping avoid another pandemic in the future, and focusing on the wrong direction would waste global resources on fruitless measures, he added.