Anti-leak chief off COV panel

The head of a New York Citybased nonprofit that directed hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal grant money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology is no longer part of a UN-backed commission examining the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak’s profile on the Web site of The Lancet COVID-19 Commission has been updated to include the parenthetical quote:

“recused from Commission work on the origins of the pandemic.”

Earlier this month, Vanity Fair reported that Daszak (inset), a British zoologist, helped organize a controversial statement signed by 27 leading scientists that appeared in The Lancet — a prestigious medical journal — in February 2020.

The statement condemned what it called “conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin,” and proclaimed “solidarity with all scientists and health professionals in China.”

“Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumours , and prejudice that jeopardise our global collaboration in the fight against this virus,” the statement added.

At least one of the signatories has since walked back his support of the “natural” theory, which says that the pandemic was not the result of a lab leak but of contact with an infected animal.