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FACT BRIEF

Did Dr. Anthony Fauci's project manager confess to creating COVID-19?

By Dana Ford
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NO

The claim is based on a months-old interview with Dr. Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, an environmental health organization that has received funding from the National Institutes of Health. The video that purportedly includes his admission only shows Daszak talking about coronavirus research; he says nothing about creating SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Daszak's interview was with Vincent Racaniello, a podcaster and professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University.

Lead Stories asked Racaniello about the video's claim. In an email Racaniello wrote of Daszak: "He didn't confess to any such thing. These experiments are needed to examine the pandemic potential of viruses that circulate in bats."

Although the possibility that COVID-19 came from a lab cannot be ruled out, experts have independently concluded that the preponderance of evidence indicates it mutated naturally from animals to humans.

See a full discussion of this at Lead Stories
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
World Health Organization WHO-convened global study of origins of SARS-CoV-2: China Part
Nature The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR
Lead Stories
Lead Stories is a fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015. It scouts for trending stories, images, videos and posts that contain false information in order to fact check them as quickly as possible. It actively monitors the fake-news ecosystem and doesn’t wait for reader tips or reports before getting started on a story.
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About fact briefs published on Gigafact
Fact briefs are short, credibly sourced summaries that offer “yes/no” answers in response to claims found online. They rely on publicly available, often primary source data and documents. Fact briefs are created by contributors to Gigafact —a nonprofit project looking to expand participation in fact-checking and protect the democratic process. See all fact briefs here.