A minister from the United Kingdom who suggested that COVID-19 could be a “man-made” virus was instantly silenced while testifying before an independent public inquiry into the UK’s pandemic response.
“We were not as well prepared as we should have been ideally [to counter the COVID-19 pandemic], that is true,” Michael Gove, the UK’s Levelling Up minister, said Tuesday. “Again, it’s in the nature of the fact that the virus was novel. And indeed—I think this probably goes beyond the remit of the inquiry—there is a significant body of judgment that believes that the virus itself was man-made. And that presents its own set of challenges as well.”
