Washington | The United States’ top health official called on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) for a swift follow-up investigation into the origins of COVID-19 amid renewed questions about whether the virus jumped from an animal host into humans in a naturally occurring event or escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China.

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra told an annual ministerial meeting of the World Health Organisation that international experts should be given “the independence to fully assess the source of the virus and the early days of the outbreak”.

Washington Post