https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-much-more-likely-the-coronavirus-came-from-wildlife-not-a-lab1/

For a year now, as the world tried to figure out how to stop the COVID pandemic, many people have been consumed by a different question: How did it start? In an interview with CNN that aired on March 28, a prominent scientist speculated, without evidence, that the origin was when the SARS-CoV-2 virus escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, where the outbreak was first noticed. Virologist Robert Redfield, a former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, said “That’s my own view. It’s only opinion.”

Two days later, advocates of a different origin gave their view: there was a wildlife spillover, with a virus that started in bats in China. A joint report from the World Health Organization and the Chinese government speculated, again without direct evidence, that a bat virus went through other animals and ended up infecting humans.