Dr. Ashish Jha, who served as the White House's COVID-19 response coordinator under President Biden, said Sunday that he now believes the coronavirus pandemic was most likely caused by a lab leak, a shift from the position he held when he first joined the administration.
During an interview on CNN with anchor Dana Bash, Jha was asked about a social media post by commentator Jamie Metzl laying out the case for a Wuhan Institute of Virology origin. Bash noted that Jha had shared the post with the comment, «I pretty much agree with everything here.» Jha confirmed that assessment on air, saying the evidence he has reviewed since his time in government changed his thinking.
«This is going to surprise some people. You know, when I went into the White House, my view was, 'This was almost surely a natural outbreak, maybe a lab leak,'» Jha said. «Based on information I learned and based on information I've seen, I have come to conclude that it is more likely to have been a lab leak.»
Jha offered a caveat. «Here's the bottom line. No one in the United States knows for sure. The only people who know for sure are people — officials in China — and we still need transparency and accountability on that. So that is my best assessment. I'm not suggesting I know for sure, but I'm saying my best assessment is that it probably was a lab leak,» he said.
Later, Jha posted a clip of the exchange on X and clarified that his view did not originate with the interview. «My view on COVID origins isn't new — I've held it since my time at the White House,» he wrote. «Here's the truth: no one in America knows for sure. Anyone telling you they do is selling you something. Based on strong circumstantial evidence I've seen, I think lab leak is much more likely. Not engineered. Not deliberate. Accidental. Reasonable people can look at the same evidence and disagree.»
The comments come after years of contentious debate over the origins of the virus that caused a global health crisis. Early in the pandemic, the lab leak hypothesis was widely dismissed by health officials and many media organizations, which treated it as a debunked conspiracy theory. Natural transmission from animals at a Chinese wet market was seen as the more likely explanation. Some social media platforms also restricted claims about lab leaks under policies aimed at limiting COVID-19 misinformation.
Watchdogs have since pointed to those early dismissals as a blow to the credibility of the news media. NPR, for instance, ran pieces in April 2020 rejecting the lab leak theory, including a story headlined «Scientists Debunk Lab Accident Theory of Pandemic Emergence.» CNN was also criticized for reporting that praised China's pandemic response and touted the country's one-party system as an advantage in controlling the outbreak.
The pandemic also triggered a broader confrontation over speech online. The Biden administration was sued over its efforts to pressure social media companies to remove content that challenged official narratives about the virus. Under a settlement, the Office of the Surgeon General, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency are barred for the next decade from threatening or coercing platforms to suppress protected speech, and officials cannot direct or veto content moderation decisions.
The tension reached even late-night television. Jon Stewart, during a segment, mocked the reluctance to examine the lab theory, saying the virus shared its name with the Wuhan lab and asking why scientists there had not been pressed on how it emerged. The exchange stood out because Stewart's friend Stephen Colbert had been cautious about questioning official expertise during the pandemic.
Jha acknowledged that reasonable people could look at the same information and disagree. Scientists and governments continue to seek a definitive answer, but he said the United States still lacks access to the evidence needed to settle the question.