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Biden Wants Further Research on Wuhan Lab Theory; U.K. Health Secretary Defends Government's Early Handling of Pandemic; G7 Condemns Belarusian Terror Tactics against Journalists and Activists; DRC is "World's Most Neglected Displacement Crisis." Aired 10-11a ET

Aired May 27, 2021 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:00:00]

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BECKY ANDERSON, CNN HOST (voice-over): Tonight, the origins of the pandemic, the most powerful man in the world orders his spies to find out

if it leaked out of a lab.

Then restrictions ease, cases rise; the United Kingdom now reporting a spike of COVID infections. We are live in London for you.

And we are on the ground in the Democratic Republic of Congo, described by one humanitarian agency as the world's most neglected displacement crisis.

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ANDERSON: Opposite sides of the world and opposite views of it.

It is 10:00 in the morning in D.C., it is 10:00 pm in Beijing and, right here in Abu Dhabi, it is 6:00 in the evening. I'm Becky Anderson, welcome

to CONNECT THE WORLD.

Well, it's infected 170 million people worldwide and killed 3.5 million that we know of. And it's changed the world in ways none of us could have

imagined just 18 months ago. Ever since this modern day plague started, one question, the biggest question remains unanswered.

What is the origin of the novel coronavirus?

Well, in Washington, the American president is putting new focus on finding the answer amid growing suspicion that it did not emerge from animals. Joe

Biden ordering his international community to focus on two theories.

One is that COVID-19 spread naturally from animals to humans, possibly at a wet market in Wuhan in China.

The other, that it somehow escaped from a lab in Wuhan. And it's that latter theory that is gaining new traction after U.S. intelligence reports

found several researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology got sick and had to be hospitalized back in November 2019.

Well, China calling lab leak theories smear campaigns and flat-out denying any kind of cover-up. We're going to break down the science and the

politics behind this story with White House correspondent John Harwood, who is in Washington.

And Nick Paton Walsh has inside information from the recent WHO stories.

To you first, though, John. Joe Biden has asked the intelligence agencies to redouble their efforts and report back within 90 days on the origins of

this pandemic.

Is it clear why he's ordered this report now?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think, Becky, as we have gotten to the other side of the pandemic, questions that had been

lingering from the beginning get louder and louder.

Remember, China was opaque, not transparent, from the start, when they didn't let the CDC scientists go in, as the United States was offering and

hoping would happen at the beginning of the pandemic.

Then, of course, you had the complicated situation where president Trump was praising China's cooperation. Then later as the pandemic got worse, he

was blaming China.

But more than anything else, government officials in the United States were concentrating on dealing with the pandemic, dealing with the case counts

and then testing and then the vaccination campaign.

Now that we're getting to the other side, there's more space to look at, well, exactly how did we get here?

And the Biden administration had been looking at that quietly, early in the year. And then you had this WHO report came out, that China clearly

influenced, in its lack of transparency, influenced.

And that's creating more and more pressure to say, how did this happen?

And obviously, big stakes for China. It would be a huge blow to Chinese prestige, rather than a human to animal transmission, that this is the

result of incompetence or sloppiness in a Chinese lab.

ANDERSON: Nick -- thank you, John.

Clearly, China believes there's pandemic politics at play here and we can discuss that after you and I discuss why it is that a report like this is

needed.

What are you expecting to be achieved at this point?

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NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR: I have to say I would be surprised if, after three months, we were massively closer to knowing

the answer to this but it is probably the question of our time, really.

Not since 9/11 has a singular global event impacted possibly our lives around the world quite so intensely. And we don't know why this happened

and how this happened so we can stop it from happening again.

Now there are three extraordinary coincidences, Becky, that keep being pushed around when people are trying to talk about the lab leak theory.

The first one is the city of Wuhan, is where China has lot of its top-end investigative laboratories look at virus research.

The second one is the Wuhan CDC moved one of the laboratories closer to the seafood wet market just in the very 2nd day of December, 2019. And as WHO

report actually notes, that would have been disruptive.

They also in the report note that a lab leak was unlikely.

And then finally, too, this, frankly, quite inconclusive piece of intelligence, suggesting that three lab workers in November were ill. It

doesn't say what they were ill from and the WHO report, using information supplied by the Chinese government, says that those workers were tested

across all laboratories in Wuhan and given antibody tests, too, and that gave them nothing useful to work out what was going on.

But that seemed to shift the balance slightly. Also there was a substantial influenza outbreak happening in Wuhan at that time, too.

But the three pieces make many people say, how can the three coincidences possibly not be relevant to how this virus emerged?

And then the other side of the argument, frankly, is a lot more complicated and that's where the mounds of the scientific reporting come in, how the

bats can go from an intermediary animal and then sit there for years and slowly change into something susceptible for humans and move from that

intermediary animal like a cat into human beings.

And the Chinese, they have been seriously undermined by the lack of transparency and even by the investigators, except they're only working on

information given to them by China -- Becky.

ANDERSON: Yes. And they said that it was extremely unlikely that this -- that this started in a lab. They did not say it was extremely impossible,

which is the way that China has related the results of the WHO inquiry.

Nick, China has responded, slamming this as a smear campaign. Without China's cooperation, I just wonder just how limited any new U.S.

intelligence report will be.

WALSH: Frankly, by now, if U.S. intelligence or their allies had some killer piece of evidence, they probably would have given it to the public,

frankly, unless it's super classified that we'll never hear about.

But there's something it seems that keeps bugging parts of the intelligence community into thinking this is a possibility. The way it was explained to

me by one Western intelligence source is, we can't prove this didn't happen. We can't prove that it did.

Becky, one more fundamental evidential problem as well, if it was a leak from a laboratory, we're talking about one or two people infected. And then

you have the normal standard human to human chain.

So it will be hard to work out whether somebody dropped a test tube versus whether or not they went to the wet market.

I should give China's point of view, because, while they have been heavily criticized here, they maintain this may have come from somewhere outside of

China. They say that the U.S. do not care about facts and truth at all. They're not interested in serious scientific origin tracing but want to

engage in stigmatization and shift blame.

The key question is, is this renewed focus by a new administration probably less politically focused on shifting blame at this late stage?

Is that going to make the intelligence community in the U.S. actually come to a conclusion?

They haven't been able to yet and they seem split by a 2-1 particular inability to decide between animals versus labs. I personally think the

next three months will be inconclusive. But it will cause a lot of blame.

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ANDERSON: And, John Harwood, we'll be back to you when that happens.

Thank you, both.

Well, in about 20 minutes' time, Jamie Metzl, an adviser for the WHO, talks about the possibility that COVID-19 did come from an accidental leak in a

Chinese laboratory. Some explosive new concerns about that pandemic and Mr. Metzl's perspective later on in the show.

Well, to growing calls now for the Tokyo Olympics to be canceled. A Japanese doctors' union says that the Olympics can spread mutant variants

of coronavirus across the country. The Japanese government will decide on Friday if it needs to extend the state of emergency as the nation battles a

fourth wave of COVID cases.

Now the Olympics are less than two months away and Japan has only vaccinated 2 percent of its population. Let's bring in our Selina Wang in

Tokyo.

I have to ask, there will be people watching the show who will ask -- a state of emergency has been in place now for some time since April.

What is it that Japan is struggling with and why it isn't getting the situation under control?

SELINA WANG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Becky, public health experts say that the fourth wave is being driven by more contagious variants. And on

top of that, you have COVID-19 fatigue setting in for some time in Japan.

Now these state of emergencies (sic) in Japan are not hard lockdowns. So residents are asked to refrain from nonessential outings. And businesses

are asked to close temporarily or completely.

And if they're found to have violated the rules, by and large, the prevention strategy has been reliant on self-enforcement. Now while Japan

has not seen an explosion of cases that you have seen in other parts of the world, like in the U.S. and parts of Europe, Japan has reported more than

700,000 cases and more than 12,000 deaths.

The big concern now is the extremely slow vaccination rate. As you say, Japan has only fully vaccinated about 2 percent of the population. While

this is known as a technological and industrial powerhouse, Japan has been held back by bureaucracy, a slow vaccine approval process, as well as now a

lack of medical staff to actually administer the vaccine.

And meanwhile, the medical system is under strain across the country. And in parts of the country, like in Osaka, doctors are warning of a medical

system collapse, with hospitals running out of ventilators and bed space.

And you're hearing growing opposition toward these games, including a medical association representing 6,000 doctors in Tokyo, urging for these

games to be canceled. They say it's not just a risk of spreading new variants in Japan but around the world -- Becky.

ANDERSON: Selina, Thank you.

From questions then about what is often known as the greatest show on Earth, to world-class political theater, the British health sector is

getting a grilling today in Parliament after the prime minister's former chief adviser slammed the government's early pandemic response.

Matt Hancock firing back against Dominic Cummings' claims that the health secretary interfered with the NHS' test and trace system. Hancock calls the

accusations unsubstantiated.

And just as U.K. begins to enjoy more freedoms, COVID cases there now spiking 18 percent over the last week. Let's connect you to London and

Cyril Vanier.

Let's start with this Dominic Cummings testimony. This fallout does continue. This was damning testimony of the British government's early

handling of the pandemic. He was at the heart of that handling, of course, and we have heard from Matt Hancock.

What did he have to say?

CYRIL VANIER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Becky, it's not going to surprise you that Matt Hancock defended himself and said that the allegations made

against him were completely unsubstantiated, which, I mean, if you're going to be technical about it, they are unsubstantiated in the sense that

Dominic Cummings didn't provide proof.

He was saying what he heard and what he saw, as he was the top adviser for 1.5 years. And Matt Hancock said this is not true, that he did not

interfere with the country's test and trace system, that he always told the truth in public and in private and that the government acted with an

intention to save lives, which is a line echoed by Boris Johnson himself.

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VANIER: So for the moment, Becky, it really is a case of he said/he said, with not much proof either way. There may be proof when the public inquiry

into the handling of the pandemic begins. But that, Becky, is in a year's time.

ANDERSON: U.K., meantime, reporting a near 20 percent rise in COVID-19 cases over the past week. Look, you know, nobody expects that there won't

be a slight rise as restrictions are eased. But the question will be whether these spikes continue and how concerned people should be at this

point.

Is it clear?

VANIER: Yes, I think there are two ways to read the daily COVID numbers, Becky. You read the absolute number; it is low. There are about 2,000 to

3,000 infections a day. So the absolute number of infections is low.

And at the beginning of the year, it was 60,000 at the height of the third wave. The number of deaths also low.

And the other thing you look at is the trend. Those are the numbers you give, plus 18 percent, week to week, in infections. So it shows, for the

first time in multiple weeks, infections are rising instead of decreasing. So it shows, look, this was partly expected, you know?

I went to the gym for the first time this week and it hit home, yes, there are, statistically speaking, as people started to do this again, there are

going to be more infections than when all of the gyms were closed, when all of the restaurants were closed and when all of the cinemas were closed.

So to some extent, the rise in infections was expected. It's going to be the magnitude of that rise that we need to look at.

Is it in line with expectations and with reopening the country as is being done?

Or is it above and beyond that and is it being caused by the rise in the Indian variants, which is more transmissible than the dominant variant here

in the U.K. at the moment?

ANDERSON: Thank you. Cyril Vanier with the news there in London.

A mother pleads for her son's safety. The mother of the opposition activist, Roman Protasevich, taken off of a Ryanair plane and detained in

Belarus, now speaking out. Her message for her son and for the world is up next.

Plus a volcanic eruption compounding a massive displacement crisis. We are live in the Democratic Republic of Congo with details on an alarming new

report.

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ANDERSON: A group of seven nations or the P7 is demanding the immediate and unconditional release of the oppositional activist who was detained

after his Ryanair flight was forced to land in Belarus.

[10:20:00]

ANDERSON: This as Roman Protasevich's parents appeared at a news conference today, alongside his colleague, wiping away tears. His mother

said it's clear her son has been beaten and his nose broken. She urged more international pressure on Belarus.

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NATALIA PROTASEVICH, ROMAN'S MOTHER (through translator): Dear journalists, I beg you to help spread this information to help me save my

child, my son. Please hear the scream of my heart. It's a horrible situation that we're in. All he wanted was to help his country, his fellow

citizens. We ask you for your support.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON: Well, the aviation fallout from all of this continues, as airlines are trying to avoid Belarus airspace. Air France canceling its

flight to and from Moscow earlier today. Austria Airlines canceled the flight from Vienna to Moscow after Russian authorities did not allow for

another route.

Well, there's concern growing for Roman Protasevich's safety after the death of another activist, a death that suggests abuse. CNN's Nick Paton

Walsh has our exclusive report. I must warn you, some of you may find the images in the report disturbing.

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WALSH (voice-over): The plane hijacking may rage above but daily abuse in Belarus look like this. This day's doddering figure is opposition activist

Witold Ashurok.

He falls into the toilet, it seems, without anyone touching him in this edited surveillance footage from last week. Supplied by the Belarusian

authorities who are eager to show they helped a 50-year-old prisoner.

But here again, they show him bandaged and he, again, seems too weak to stand. His relative say they met Witold healthy just weeks earlier, but

they were initially told he died of a cardiac arrest.

But here is his body at his funeral Wednesday, his head bandaged. It doesn't look just like natural causes.

Outside they gather, the family burying him without being able to get an independent examination. The truth stolen from them even in death.

ANTON ASHUROK, BROTHER OF WITOLD ASHUROK (via translator): As a human being I don't believe that a man's heart just stopped that he fell and

killed himself. I really want to get to the bottom of it. In these conditions, it seems impossible to have an independent examination.

WALSH: He was arrested in August protest against the fraudulent electoral victory declared by President Alexander Lukashenko. In January, he was

sentenced to five years for allegedly organizing protests and attacking the police officer.

Jubilant here in court, the crowd chanting shame.

SVETLANA TIKHANOVSKAYA, BELARUSIAN OPPOSITION POLITICIAN: The reaction of the international community --

WALSH: The opposition's leader in exile called for a new stage in the protest movement today meeting European officials. And earlier expressed

her admiration for Ashurok.

TIKHANOVSKAYA (through translator): I say admire his strength of spirit and faith in the correctness of his choice. But I am very hurt by the fact

that he paid with his life. Now that we have woken up, it has become our duty to bring the matter to an end.

WALSH: When Roman Protasevich feared for his life for leaving the plane falls down in Minsk is perhaps Ashurok's fate and these scenes from a

police station last year that he had in mind. Brutality in custody is commonplace in the aftermath of protests. Demonstrators forced to face the

wall, beaten, they said here, one left motionless on the floor.

For more actual deaths have been rare so far, the death penalty remains in force. And the fate of Witold Ashurok, something Belarus's police perhaps

hoped would pass without notice, now held up as a warning to the opposition not to act, but also to the international community that it must -- Nick

Paton Walsh, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANDERSON: The Democratic Republic of Congo is being plunged further into chaos after more than 100 aftershocks raised fears of another volcanic

eruption.

Evacuation orders for tens of thousands of people in Goma who have been displaced after Saturday. That is on top of the 2 million people who fled

their homes last year due to multiple conflicts.

Now the situation is so dire that the Norwegian Refugee Council said they have the most neglected displacement crisis on the planet. Well, CNN's

Larry Madowo is in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Larry, this is an important report.

[10:25:00]

ANDERSON: IDPs, internally displaced people, lack rights under international human rights law.

Technically, they fall under the responsibility of the state, which begs the question, what is needed and what is realistic, when it comes to

alleviating the pressures causing these mass levels of displacement at this point?

LARRY MADOWO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Becky, there are already intractable problems in DRC before Saturday's volcanic eruption. Now there are

thousands of people trying to flee this little city, which has hundreds of thousands of people.

And there doesn't seem to be a way to all of that. Even in the best of times, they're operating in this part of Africa. Yet, they don't get the

same amount of attention. It's because the displaced people here are not making their way into the Mediterranean and into the world attention.

This country is probably larger than western Europe and yet you don't see as much information about it in the global media or aid agencies,

struggling just to find financing for people to aid, to put them somewhere for medicines for the children.

You see this road, this is an east route out of this active area, a red zone, this volcano. I caught up with the Norwegian Refugee Council

executive director. And he was evacuating out of here. We spoke to him on the border between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.

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JAN EGELAND, SECRETARY GENERAL, NORWEGIAN REFUGEE COUNCIL: This is a place where there's a volcano load of displacement every single day. The conflict

displaces 6,000 people every single day, from 120 groups in this region, 180 all together in Eastern Congo.

There are so many conflicts, so many disasters, so much misery, so much chaos that the people are suffering beyond belief. And nobody seems to

care.

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MADOWO: So people who were displaced just by the volcanic eruption and people who fear their houses might cave in, that's the same number of

people displaced every day by the other armed conflicts here.

We are at a church where people are gathering here and many in the town here, there's no support from the government. There's no shelter, there's

no food or medicines. They don't know what this night will be like or the next few nights. And it's unsafe to go back to where they live.

ANDERSON: Larry Madowo, thank you.

Well, coming up next, U.S. Senate hears horror stories from the Tigray region.

Plus, there are growing concerns for a deeper dive into the origins of COVID-19. We'll talk to one expert who doesn't rule out an accident or a

cover-up in China.

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ANDERSON: Our top story this hour, about what is a new focus on the origin of the coronavirus pandemic. Countries demanding answers about whether it

emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a lab accident in Wuhan in China, where the novel coronavirus was first identified.

Well, that latter theory is gaining new scrutiny after a U.S. intelligence report found that researchers at that lab got sick and were hospitalized as

early as November 2019. Joe Biden, the U.S. President, has now ordered an intelligence report.

And he's asked his experts to report back within 90 days. China calls what they refer to as "the lab leak theory" as nothing more than a smear

campaign. An adviser for the WHO, Jamie Metzl, said it could have happened while they were "poking and prodding and studying" the viruses with the

hope of developing a vaccine.

"I believe what possibly happened was there was an accidental leak, followed by a criminal cover-up." Jamie Metzl is joining us from New York.

I'm going to get you to describe or explain why it is that you have this hypothesis, because I'm not sure that's any evidence for it. But let's back

up.

This lab leak theory, it isn't new, is it?

Its biggest proponents early on were right-wing U.S. media outlets. And then the WHO investigation dismissed any link. And despite that President

Biden has ordered an inquiry now into the origins of COVID-19 and the Senate has passed an amendment, calling for another international

investigation.

I want to point out here, there's been no new evidence, no smoking gun.

So why is this theory getting so much oxygen right now, do you think?

JAMIE METZL, ATLANTIC COUNCIL: So Becky, you talked about right-wing Republicans here in the United States being the earliest proponents of this

hypothesis. But I am a Democrat and beginning in 2020, I was one of the most vocal people raising the possibility that the pandemic started through

an accidental lab incident.

And the evidence then which has only grown, which is entirely circumstantial but very, very significant, is we know that the backbone

virus of SARS-CoV-2 comes from the horseshoe bats. They don't have horseshoe bats in Wuhan but they do have China's only level 4 virology

institute with the world's largest collection of bat coronaviruses.

And they were doing highly aggressive research, making those scary viruses more scary. We know that, after the outbreak started, this virus was

perfectly well-adapted for humans, which is something we have almost never seen before in past outbreaks.

And we know that China engaged in a massive cover-up from day one, including destroying samples, hiding records, imprisoning people and

placing a gag order.

Then you mentioned the WHO, people feel that the WHO did an investigation but there has been no investigation and the joint study group was not the

WHO, as Dr. Tedros, the director general of WHO has said. This was an independent group and it was not a credible process.

ANDERSON: So I have to ask, what do you have at this point, aside from a hypothesis, because the circumstantial evidence is not new. "The Wall

Street Journal" is reporting on intelligence based on a report which was previously flagged by the Trump administration and came from outside the

U.S.

Its veracity is very hard to authenticate, isn't it?

METZL: So I'm not saying that we can prove it.

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METZL: My whole point is this is a very valid hypothesis.

But let's take the opposite, that people who are making the argument that - - the natural origins hypothesis, there's no evidence at all for that. The Chinese authorities have done 80,000 sequences with no evidence.

We know that the story of the wet market origin was a lie. The Chinese government knew it was a lie in January of last year. So that's why we're

saying there are two valid hypotheses. Natural origins is a hypothesis in almost every other past outbreak, there was some evidence.

You could see the virus evolving as it jumps between animals and then ultimately to humans.

There's none of that here. The circumstantial evidence is quite strong. People can go to the jamiemetzl.com website, it's 50 pages of the

background. Let people judge for themselves.

This is not -- there's no smoking gun. That's why what we're saying is we need a full investigation into all origin hypotheses and that's exactly the

thing that the Chinese authorities are actively blocking.

ANDERSON: And any likelihood that that will change?

Any likelihood that Chinese authorities will cooperate at this point?

Because if the international community wants to come together and run a parallel investigation, as it were, it will need cooperation from the CCP

surely.

METZL: So maybe. I mean, certainly that's why I have been pushing so hard right now. As you know, Becky, the World Health Assembly is meeting. So

what we need is the governments of the world to mandate a full and unrestricted investigation into the origins of the pandemic, with full

access to all of the relevant record samples in China and beyond.

If China blocks that, then the second best alternative will be for interested countries and experts around the world to come together to

establish a less -- it's not ideal -- a parallel process. But there's a lot of evidence that's available outside of China.

All of the evidence about the now-famous mine, where the closest known genetic relative to SARS-CoV-2 was found, that all came from the outside.

And I'm part of a group of experts and scientists. We have been deeply exploring these issues for over a year.

Again, I encouraging people, go to my jamiemetzl.com website and learn for yourselves but there's a lot there. The last thing we should do is reward

China for a cover-up by saying, oh, let's not look into how the worst pandemic in a century started.

Because if we do, we're all going to be at unnecessary risk. I, for one, don't want to be here five years from now, 10 years from now, saying there

was an avoidable risk and now 10 million more people are dead because we didn't have the courage to follow up.

ANDERSON: The problem with the WHO led investigation was --

(CROSSTALK)

METZL: Again, Becky --

(CROSSTALK)

ANDERSON: -- let me make my point. Right, OK. Fair enough.

But the -- under the auspices of -- there was such a dearth of evidence about this coronavirus and its origins that sort of, you know, continued to

spur interest in what is this is this lab leak theory.

What did we learn from that investigation?

METZL: So again, it wasn't an investigation, by the admission of the international experts who participated in it; they called it a joint study.

It's my view that that entire joint study process of independent experts and their Chinese government counterparts did actual harm. It was worse

than nothing, because, with a two-week, highly curated, highly controlled essentially study tour, without access to most of the raw data that they

needed, this joint committee essentially parroted Chinese government propaganda claims.

And that's why Dr. Tedros immediately essentially rejected the findings because they said, without any evidence, that they thought the natural

origins was more likely and what they called lab incident was highly unlikely. They had no supporting evidence.

They didn't even look into the lab incident hypothesis. That's why our group of experts around the world and our three open --

(CROSSTALK)

METZL: -- here's what it will take to fully investigate.

ANDERSON: I'm going to have to leave it there. Thank you very much, indeed, for joining us.

That analysis on a day that Joe Biden orders his intelligence community to report back to him within 90 days on the origin of COVID.

[10:40:00]

ANDERSON: Well, as that happens, Facebook says it will no longer remove claims that the virus was manmade. The company announced in February it

would block such posts after consultations with the WHO and other leading health organizations. Facebook says it will continue consulting with health

experts as the pandemic evolves.

You are watching CONNECT THE WORLD. I'm Becky Anderson. We are back after this.

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