AMN/ WEB DESK

Top American infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci has called on China to release the medical records of nine people whose ailments might provide vital clues into whether COVID-19 first emerged as the result of a lab leak.

Fauci said that he would like to see the medical records of the three people who are reported to have got sick in 2019. He added that it must be known if the three people really got sick and with what they got sick.

The origin of the virus is hotly contested, with US intelligence agencies still examining reports that researchers at a Chinese virology laboratory in Wuhan were seriously ill in 2019 a month before the first COVID-19 cases were reported.