A Republican-led U.S. congressional committee has concluded that COVID-19 likely emerged from a laboratory accident in China, according to a report released Monday following a two-year investigation.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis said in its 520-page report that the National Institutes of Health funded controversial “gain-of-function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology before the outbreak.
Committee chairman Brad Wenstrup said the findings would help prepare for and potentially prevent future pandemics. The report followed 25 meetings, over 30 interviews, and review of more than a million documents.
Most US intelligence agencies say the virus was not genetically engineered, but it is still not totally clear how the pandemic started. A US intelligence analysis released last year said either a laboratory or natural origin was possible, and the community remains split on the issue. The US Department of Energy assessed last year that it had “low confidence” in the lab leak theory. No US federal agency believes that the virus that causes Covid-19 was created as a bioweapon.
Former White House medical advisor Anthony Fauci, who testified before the panel, maintained that it would have been “molecularly impossible” for the studied bat viruses to evolve into SARS-CoV-2. Fauci now lives under security protection following death threats.
The report also claimed lockdowns caused more harm than good and questioned mask mandate effectiveness, while praising Trump’s Operation Warp Speed vaccine programme as a “tremendous success”. It warned that school closures would have lasting impacts on children.
The virus, first detected in Wuhan in December 2019, has killed more than 7 million people globally.
(Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies)
