A senior editor at The New York Times instructed staff not to investigate the origins of the coronavirus, The Spectator reported, citing sources.

‘In early 2020,’ a veteran Times employee tells me, ‘I suggested to a senior editor at the paper that we investigate the origins of COVID-19. I was told it was dangerous to run a piece about the origins of the coronavirus. There was resistance to running anything that could suggest that [COVID-19 was manmade or had leaked accidentally from a lab].’

As confirmed by a second source of the magazine, The New York Times thwarted any attempts to find out the origin of the virus, and any deviations from the line of the World Health Organization (WHO) were considered a conspiracy theory.

On July 15, the WHO Director-General said the organization is preparing for the second phase of the study of the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. He noted that the first phase faced certain problems.

He called one of them access to data, especially to data on the beginning of a pandemic.