Union Minister Nitin Gadkari feels that the novel coronavirus, COVID-19 is not natural and was developed in a laboratory.
In an interview with NDTV, Gadkari said, “This is not a natural virus. It is an artificial virus and now many countries in the whole world - they are researching on it for a vaccine. The vaccine is not available, it is expected that vaccine will be available as soon as possible, then there will be no problem.”
Earlier, US President Donald Trump said he has evidence that the novel coronavirus originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, an unproven theory that contradicts the country's National Intelligence, which hours earlier had rejected claims of that the virus had an artificial origin.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday said the Trump administration knows enough to be confident that the deadly coronavirus emerged from a laboratory in China's Wuhan.
"I cannot say much about the intelligence we have collected with respect to this. But we know enough now to be confident of this," he said in an interview to Fox News.
Pompeo said he has seen evidence that this likely came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
"Happy to see other evidence that disproves that. We should get to the bottom of it. That is why we have been asking for months now to give Westerners access to this information," he added.
Last month, BJP MLA from Hyderabad Tiger Raj Singh while violating social distancing norms staged a dharna in Hyderabad where he kept calling the virus a 'Chinese virus.'
India has reported nearly 80,000 coronavirus cases, with Maharashtra recording the highest number of cases.
