Three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalized in November 2019, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report.
The report goes beyond a State Department fact sheet issued during the final days of former President Donald Trump’s administration, which said the staffers became sick in autumn 2019 “with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illness,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
Intelligence officials differed on the degree of evidence supporting the report’s credibility, with one unidentified official telling the outlet the claims required further substantiation while another described the intelligence as strong.
GOP HOUSE INTEL SAYS ‘OVERWHELMING CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE’ POINTS TO WUHAN LAB FOR COVID-19 ORIGINS
“The information that we had coming from the various sources was of exquisite quality. It was very precise. What it didn’t tell you was exactly why they got sick,” he said, referring to the researchers.
Officials from both the Trump and Biden administrations have said that the Chinese government worked for over a year to thwart an independent investigation into the origins of the virus, and both administrations have cast doubt on the manner in which the study from China and the World Health Organization was conducted in early 2021. Though the WHO-China report said a jump from animals to humans was most likely, Trump officials have pointed to an accidental escape from the Wuhan lab as a highly plausible origin for the pandemic.
In March, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the WHO, said the joint team had not fully investigated the potential of COVID-19 originating through an accidental leak from the lab, insisting the hypothesis needed further study despite the possibility being deemed “extremely unlikely” by the team, which claimed the most likely origin was a jump from animal to animal to human.
Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee released a report on the coronavirus pandemic on Wednesday and pointed the finger directly at the
Wuhan lab.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden‘s chief medical adviser, had apparently changed his tune on the virus’s origin. While he laughed off the possibility of a lab leak when asked about the theory last May, he recently said he was no longer confident the disease emerged naturally.
“No, actually. … No, I’m not convinced about that. I think that we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we find out to the best of our ability exactly what happened,” Fauci said during a May 11 interview. “Certainly, the people who’ve investigated it say it likely was the emergence from an animal reservoir that then infected individuals, but it could’ve been something else, and we need to find that out. So, you know, that’s the reason why I said I’m perfectly in favor of any investigation that looks into the origin of the virus.”
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The State Department fact sheet, which was released in mid-January, contended Wuhan lab researchers “conducted experiments involving RaTG13, the bat coronavirus identified by the WIV in January 2020 as its closest sample to SARS-CoV-2 (96.2% similar)” and that the lab “has a published record of conducting ‘gain-of-function’ research to engineer chimeric viruses.” The fact sheet added the lab “has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military.”
More than 32 million cases of COVID-19 have been diagnosed in the United States, and 586,793 U.S. deaths have been attributed to the disease, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
