WHO advisory board member admits China engaging in 'massive cover-up' on COVID-19 origins

Jamie Metzl, an advisory board member for the World Health Organization, admitted Monday that communist-controlled China continues to engage in a "massive cover-up" to hide the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Metzl's admission came as the Wuhan lab-leak theory — initially dismissed by American media as a conspiracy theory despite a lack of evidence disproving the possibility — has gained significant traction in respected circles. Some scientists now even say that COVID-19 was engineered by scientists in a laboratory.

What is the background?

Following a rushed investigation earlier this year, the WHO concluded the possibility that COVID-19 escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology was "extremely unlikely."

An investigative team assembled by the WHO reached the conclusion despite being hamstrung by Beijing, which tightly controlled the brief investigation. In fact, Dr. Peter Daszak, a controversial figure who served on that investigative team, later admitted that WHO investigators essentially believed the information that Beijing gave them about COVID-19.

What did Metzl say?

Speaking on Fox News, Metzl revealed the extent of Beijing's campaign to smolder the truth about COVID-19.

"The Chinese have engaged in a massive cover-up that is going on until this day, involving destroying samples, hiding records, placing a universal gag order on Chinese scientists and imprisoning Chinese citizen journalists asking the most basic question," Metzl explained.

"The more that China stonewalls, the more suspicious that it looks," he added, speaking of the Wuhan lab-leak theory.

"China may not want to investigate the origins of this pandemic ... but we can't give China a veto over whether or not we investigate the world's worst pandemic in a century and then do everything we can to make everybody safe," Metzl said.

In a recent interview with CBS, Metzl confirmed the WHO's Wuhan investigation was all bark and no bite.

In fact, he explained China did not allow the outside investigative team to conduct its own investigation. Instead, Chinese officials conducted the "primary investigation," with WHO embarking on what Metzl called a "study tour."

"Everybody around the world is imagining this is some kind of full investigation. It's not. This group of experts only saw what the Chinese government wanted them to see," Metzl said.

"We would have to ask the question, 'Well, why in Wuhan?' To quote Humphrey Bogart, 'Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, why Wuhan?' What Wuhan does have is China's level four virology institute, with probably the world's largest collection of bat viruses, including bat coronaviruses," he noted.