Dr Anthony Fauci, who served as the US's chief medical adviser at the start of the pandemic, has criticised a book by News Corp investigative journalist Sharri Markson in his newly released diaries. The book supports the "lab leak" theory regarding Covid-19's origins, with Fauci labelling it "a bunch of nonsense".
Fauci, 85, was subpoenaed this week by Republican senator Rand Paul to appear at a Senate hearing concerning Covid-19 and his management of the pandemic. Paul published 1,141 pages of Fauci's pandemic-era journal entries prior to the hearing.
In his diary entries, Fauci also criticised a 2021 article by Markson in The Australian newspaper, which claimed Chinese military scientists discussed weaponising Sars coronaviruses. Fauci wrote that the article "does not make any sense", questioning why an agent would be made that could infect one's own population.
Markson told Guardian Australia that "the majority of the intelligence community now concludes that Covid-19 likely originated in a Wuhan laboratory." She also stated she exposed Fauci's agency funding projects at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The origins of the Covid-19 pandemic continue to be debated, with two main theories: the natural-origins hypothesis and lab leak theories.