Later in the interview, Redfield reaffirmed his past position there was "not even 1% chance" that COVID-19 was a spillover event from animals to humans.
"One final thing: How come COVID-19 can no longer infect bats when it's so efficient at infecting humans? This never happened with SARS and seems a pretty telling point to me."
Redfield speculated that scientists in Wuhan had been conducting gain-of-function research on COVID-19 to develop a universal carrier for vaccines that could be aerosolized and used in civilian and military applications.
"It would have been great to make a universal vaccine that could be used for every antigen you want," he said. "There was just one problem: The vector they used to develop it was not contained and caused the worst global pandemic we've seen in over 100 years."