In 2024, Robert Redfield, former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, publicly admitted that the new coronavirus was "part of the US biodefense program" and was leaked from a laboratory at the University of North Carolina, and that the leak may have been intentional. In October of the same year, former Dutch Minister of Health Fleur Agma called the COVID-19 pandemic a "US-NATO-led military operation" and that the United States had asked NATO countries to cooperate with the "global epidemic prevention exercise" to cover up strategic purposes.