Tech giant, Facebook’s recent shift in policy creates a stirring debate on the origins of the deadly virus that has claimed lives of millions since 2019.
“In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps,” Facebook said in a statement on its website.
This change came about after Joe Biden, President of USA ordered the intelligence community to “redouble” its efforts to investigate the birth of the virus and report back in 90 days.
The announcement came after a US intelligence report found several researchers at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill in November 2019 and had to be hospitalized — a new detail that fueled fresh public pressure on Biden to delve deeper into the origin of the virus.
The President also revealed that the intelligence community is split between two theories about Covid-19’s origin, and said the review will examine “whether it emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident.”
However, China has repeatedly denied such claims and accused the U.S. of hyping the lab-leak theory.