A prominent scientist on Sunday (Monday AEST) added his voice to the growing number of experts calling for a full investigation into the origins of COVID-19, saying the future of public health is at stake.

“There’s going to be COVID-26 and COVID-32 unless we fully understand the origins of COVID-19,” Peter Hotez, a professor of pediatrics and molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor University and a leading expert on the virus, said on NBC News’ Meet The Press. He said coming to firm conclusions about how the virus emerged was “absolutely essential” in preventing future pandemics.

New reports suggest that China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology was at the centre of the outbreak, not animal-to-human transmission elsewhere in Wuhan, which was the long-prevalent opinion. President Joe Biden last week ordered a fresh 90-day intelligence review of the virus’ origins with the goal of examining the possibility that it accidentally leaked from the Wuhan lab instead of being transmitted from bats or other animals to humans in a zoonotic transmission.

The White House wants a deeper understanding of how a virus that has killed about 600,000 Americans and 3.5 million people worldwide came into existence and has charged the CIA and other agencies with doing more to find out.

Professor Hotez, however, said intelligence-gathering alone was not enough.

“I’m personally of the opinion we’ve pushed intelligence as far as we can. What we need to do is an outbreak investigation,” he said, noting that ideally this would be a six- to 12-month operation in Wuhan, in Hubei province, with scientists on the ground collecting extensive samples and other forensic evidence.

Read the full story here: