US lawmakers back COVID-19 Chinese lab leak theory after two-year probe
The building of Huanan seafood market, where the second floor remains open for optics stores, and where coronavirus believed to have first surfaced, almost a year after the start of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Wuhan, Hubei provinc
US lawmakers concluded a two-year investigation Monday into the COVID-19 outbreak that killed 1.1 million Americans, endorsing the theory that the virus likely leaked from a Chinese laboratory, News.az reports citing Al Arabiya .
A 520-page report from the Republican-controlled House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic examined the federal and state-level response, the origins of the pandemic, and vaccination efforts.“This work will help the United States, and the world, predict the next pandemic, prepare for the next pandemic, protect ourselves from the next pandemic, and hopefully prevent the next pandemic,” panel chairman Brad Wenstrup wrote in a letter to Congress.
US federal agencies, the World Health Organization, and scientists globally have drawn different conclusions about COVID-19’s origin, with no consensus. Most believe it spread from animals in China, though a US intelligence analysis last year suggested the virus might have been genetically engineered and escaped from a virology lab in Wuhan, where human cases first emerged.
The congressional panel was persuaded by the lab leak theory after 25 meetings, more than 30 transcribed interviews, and a review of over one million pages of documents.
The investigation included two days of closed-door interviews with Anthony Fauci, the government scientist who became a prominent figure during the chaotic early days of the pandemic. Fauci’s clashes with both former and incoming President Donald Trump over the pandemic response incited anger from the right, and he now lives with security protection following death threats against his family.
Republicans have accused the 83-year-old immunologist of contributing to the pandemic by approving funding passed on to Chinese scientists they claim were involved in manufacturing the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.
Among its findings, the report said the National Institutes of Health had indeed funded contentious “gain-of-function” research — which seeks to enhance viruses to find ways to combat them — at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Fauci denied covering up COVID-19’s origins, telling the panel in June that it would be “molecularly impossible” for the bat viruses studied at the lab to have been turned into the virus that caused the pandemic. However, the report concluded that SARS-CoV-2 “likely emerged because of a laboratory or research-related accident.”
The panel criticized lockdowns, claiming they “did more harm than good,” and said mask mandates were “ineffective at controlling the spread of COVID-19,” contradicting other research supporting public masking as a way to reduce transmission.
Social distancing guidelines were also questioned, although travel restrictions were credited with saving lives.
Investigators found that Trump’s Operation Warp Speed — the publicly funded initiative to develop COVID-19 vaccines — was a “tremendous success,” but they warned that school closures would have an “enduring impact” on US children.
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