It's today explained, I'm Halima Shaw sitting in for Sean Ramasferum.

Remember the lab leak theory?

You know the claim that COVID-19 actually came out of a lab in Wuhan, China?

We're looking at exactly where it came from, who it came from, how it happened separately,

and also scientifically.

So we're going to be able to fund it.

And my question is, have you seen anything at this point that gives you a high degree

of confidence that the Wuhan Institute of Erology was the origin of this virus?

Yes, I have.

Well, the story that seemed too conspiratorial to be true is now getting a second look.

The debate over the origin of COVID-19 is heating up yesterday.

President Biden announced he's giving the US intelligence community 90 days to produce

a report on the subject, which could have major implications for US relations with China.

And though we're talking about a theory about coronavirus that emerged in 2019, Vox's

science reporter, Umar Irfan, said the theory's roots are actually back in the early 2000s.

Back to the original SARS outbreak.

March 2003.

The pandemic grips Hong Kong as a deadly new virus sweeps through the city, one of the

most densely populated in the world.

At that point, there was a spillover event where a virus likely jumped from bats into

civic cats into humans at some place in China.

And that really caught the world's attention.

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