The U.S. government has been politically hyping coronavirus origin tracing as part of an effort to push a conspiracy theory centered on so-called "laboratory leakage", which has drawn strong opposition from a large number of leading scientists. There is no evidence to back up the idea that the coronavirus came from a laboratory and the allegation only politicizes the issue, said Vincent Racaniello, a Higgins Professor from the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Columbia University.
Racaniello also said that a number of people in the U.S. are trying to draw more attention to the virus origin tracing so they can politicize the issue despite a lack of coherent knowledge or expertise on the subject.