US lawmakers back Covid Chinese lab leak theory after two-year probe

A two-year investigation into the Covid outbreak has revealed where the virus most likely came from.

Covid-19 likely leaked from a Chinese laboratory, according to a two-year investigation into pandemic in the US.

A 520-page report from the Republican-controlled House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which killed 1.1 million Americans, looked at the federal and state-level response, as well as the pandemic’s origins 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 said in a letter to Congress.

“The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted a distrust in leadership. Trust is earned. Accountability, transparency, honesty, and integrity will regain this trust. A future pandemic requires a whole of America response managed by those without personal benefit or bias. We can always do better, and for the sake of future generations of Americans, we must. It can be done.”

The Wuhan Institute of Virology. Picture: Thomas Peter/Reuters

A transmission electron micrograph of SARS-CoV-2 virus particles. Picture: AFP

US federal agencies, the World Health Organization (WHO) and scientists across the planet have arrived at different conclusions about the most likely origin of Covid-19, and no consensus has emerged.

Most believe it to have spread from animals in China, but a US intelligence analysis said last year that the virus may have been genetically engineered and escaped from a virology lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where human cases first emerged.

The congressional panel was persuaded by the lab leak theory after meeting 25 times, conducting more than 30 transcribed interviews and reviewing more than one million pages of documents.

The report listed the five “strongest arguments” in favour of the lab leak theory:

1) The virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature.

2) Data shows that all Covid-19 cases stem from a single introduction into humans. This runs contrary to previous pandemics where there were multiple spillover events.

3) Wuhan is home to China’s foremost SARS research lab, which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research at inadequate biosafety levels.

4) Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) researchers were sick with a Covid-like virus in the fall of 2019, months before Covid-19 was discovered at the wet market.

5) By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced.

Republican lawmakers have backed the lab leak theory. Picture: Johannes Eisele/AFP

The investigation included two days of interviews behind closed doors with Anthony Fauci, the government scientist who became the nation’s most trusted expert in the chaotic early days of the 2020 outbreak.

Dr Fauci’s clashes with former and incoming President Donald Trump over the response sparked fury on the right, and he now lives with security protection following death threats against his family.

Republicans accuse the 83-year-old immunologist of helping to set off the worst pandemic in a century by approving funding passed on to Chinese scientists they accuse of manufacturing the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes Covid-19.

Human Covid cases first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Picture: Hector Retamal/AFP

Among its headline conclusions, the report said the National Institutes of Health had indeed funded contentious “gain-of-function” research — which seeks to enhance viruses as a way of finding ways to combat them — at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Dr Fauci angrily denied covering up the origins of Covid-19 before the panel in June, arguing that it would be “molecularly impossible” for the bat viruses studied at the lab to be turned into the virus that caused the pandemic.

But the panel’s report said SARS-CoV-2 “likely emerged because of a laboratory or research-related accident”.

Billions lost to fraud

Elsewhere, the report outlined sweeping misuse of taxpayer-funded pandemic relief programs.

“Federal and state governments had significant lapses in coordination, were unprepared to oversee the allocation of Covid-19 relief funds, and failed to sufficiently identify waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars during the pandemic,” it said.

Fraudsters and criminals made off with at least $US64 billion ($99 billion) via the Paycheck Protection Program, $US191 billion ($295 billion) was lost through fraudulent unemployment claims, and failures by the Small Business Administration to ensure adequate fraud protection measures cost $US200 million ($308 million).

At least half of the US taxpayer dollars lost in Covid relief programs were stolen by international fraudsters, according to the findings.

The House Select Coronavirus Pandemic Subcommittee. Picture: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/AFP

Angry response in Beijing

Beijing hit back at the report on Tuesday, saying it had “no credibility” and accusing the United States of using the outbreak for “political manipulation”.

“The authoritative scientific conclusion drawn by the China-WHO joint expert team … is that a laboratory leak is extremely unlikely,” foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told a regular news conference.

“In the absence of any substantive evidence, the so-called US report has concocted leading conclusions, slandered China (and) planted false evidence,” he said.

The congressional panel was highly critical of the WHO, saying the global body was an “abject failure because it caved to pressure from the Chinese Communist Party and placed China’s political interests ahead of its international duties”.

Lockdowns ‘did more harm than good’

The probe also found that lockdowns “did more harm than good” and that mask mandates were “ineffective at controlling the spread of Covid-19”, contradicting other research showing that masking in public does reduce transmission rates.

Social distancing guidelines also came under criticism, although travel restrictions were deemed to have saved lives.

“The ‘six feet apart’ social distancing recommendation — which shut down schools and small business across the country — was arbitrary and not based on science,” the report said. “During closed door testimony, Dr Fauci testified that the guidance, ‘sort of just appeared’.”

The science also “never justified” school closures, which the panel said would have an “enduring impact” on children.

Vaccine ‘did not stop the spread’

Investigators found that Mr Trump’s Operation Warp Speed — the publicly-funded project to develop Covid vaccines — was a “tremendous success”.

However they concluded that “contrary to what was promised, the Covid-19 vaccine did not stop the spread or transmission of the virus”.

“Vaccine mandates were not supported by science and caused more harm than good,” the report said, adding that public health officials “engaged in a coordinated effort to ignore natural immunity — which is acquired through previous Covid-19 infection”.

“The Biden administration coerced healthy Americans into compliance with Covid-19 vaccine mandates that trampled individual freedoms, harmed military readiness, and disregarded medical freedom to force a novel vaccine on millions of Americans without sufficient evidence to support their policy decisions.”

They also found lack of acknowledgment and proper reporting of vaccine injuries “deteriorated public trust in vaccine safety” and the government was “failing to efficiently, fairly, and transparently adjudicate claims for the Covid-19 vaccine injured”.

Democrats slam ‘partisan’ probe

In a 13-page rebuttal, Democrats on the committee accused the Republicans of fuelling “extreme narratives vilifying America’s public health officials, scientists and teachers”.

Democrats rejected a number of the key conclusions, including the lab leak theory.

“Today, a zoonotic origin and lab accident are both plausible, as is a ‘hybrid’ scenario reflecting a mixture of the two,” they said, arguing “we are more or less where we started”.

“One thing that nearly all witnesses who testified on this issue agreed upon was that without greater transparency from the Chinese Communist Party, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to know the origins of Covid-19,” they said.

— with AFP