NEW DELHI - Times of India has recently published an article refuting the COVID-19 lab leak theory.

"There has been considerable debate over the origin of COVID19," the article wrote. "Valuable time has been spent on procrastinating whether it is from a Lab. It is not."

"The virus must have arisen by natural selection, not manipulation," noted the article, quoting studies by some scientists, including Kristian Andersen, a professor of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research, a US medical research facility.

The novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is the product of natural evolution, according to findings published in March in the journal Nature Medicine.

The analysis of public genome sequence data from SARS-CoV-2 and related viruses found no evidence that the virus was made in a laboratory or otherwise engineered.

"By comparing the available genome sequence data for known coronavirus strains, we can firmly determine that SARS-CoV-2 originated through natural processes," said Andersen, corresponding author on the paper.