White House says no consensus on Covid origin

Comments follow Energy Department assessment that pandemic likely started with leak from Chinese lab.

Members of a World Health Organisation team at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in 2021. Picture: AFP.

The White House said there was no consensus within the Biden administration over the origins of the Covid-19 virus, a day after the disclosure of an Energy Department assessment that the pandemic likely originated with a leak from a Chinese lab.

The Energy Department, which had previously been undecided on the origins of the pandemic, recently joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation in saying the virus likely spread via a mishap at a Chinese laboratory, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said President Joe Biden was determined to nail down where Covid started but there continued to be broad uncertainty within the administration about its origins. He declined to comment on the Journal article.

“There is not a consensus right now in the US government about exactly how Covid started,” Mr Kirby said at a briefing on Monday (Tuesday AEDT). “We’re just not there yet. If we have something that is ready to be briefed to the American people and the congress, we will do that.”

The Energy Department made its judgment based on new intelligence, albeit with “low confidence”, according to the Journal’s reporting. Four other US government agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, still believe the pandemic was likely the result of a natural transmission from an infected animal, while two others are undecided.

Republicans said the Energy Department assessment backed up their long-held suspicions, and they urged the declassification of more evidence related to the outbreak.

Mike Gallagher, the Republican chairman of the house select committee on China, called for the Biden administration to declassify Covid information. He said he was seeking to pass legislation to impose sanctions and other restrictions on China-affiliated scientists until there was a full investigation into the Chinese lab.

“As evidence clearly mounts in favour of the lab-leak hypothesis, the American people deserve complete transparency,” Mr Gallagher said. “In order to prevent the next pandemic, we have to know how this one began.”

China’s government rejected the assessment and accused the agency of engaging in a political smear.

“The origin of the novel coronavirus is a scientific issue and should not be politicised,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said.

She pointed to a World Health Organisation investigative team that visited China in early 2021 and concluded that Covid-19 was highly unlikely to have leaked from a lab, which she characterised as “an authoritative scientific conclusion”.

The origin of Covid-19 has been the subject of intense debate among epidemiologists, intelligence experts and politicians since the virus began circulating widely in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in early 2020. The head of the WHO-led investigative team later questioned the certainty of the “highly unlikely” wording, which he said came after two days of intense negotiations with Chinese counterparts.

Division over the question extends to US government agencies tasked by Mr Biden with discerning as much as possible about where the virus originated.

The origins of Covid turned political in the US after the outbreak began, with some Republicans floating the possibility that Covid was the result of a lab leak, which critics cast as a conspiracy theory.

Republicans on Monday noted the initial resistance to the lab-leak idea and said the developments showed the need for more disclosure. Senator Mike Braun said the Biden administration needed to declassify all evidence related to a potential lab leak “for the American people to see the facts without corporate or government censors”. The Senate passed a bill backed by Senator Braun in 2021 to declassify the evidence.

Michael McCaul, the Republican chairman of the house foreign affairs committee, said the Energy Department finding was in line with a report he had issued in 2021, and he said he had requested a briefing from the administration on the finding. “While I wish it had happened sooner, I’m pleased the Department of Energy has finally reached the same conclusion that I had already come to,” he said.

The White House was noncommittal on releasing any information. Mr Kirby, when asked if the evidence on which the Energy Department based its assessment should be released, said: “If we have something that we believe can be reported to the congress and to the American people, that we’re confident in, we will absolutely do that.”

House members are also moving forward with hearings on China. The newly formed house select committee on China plans to hold a hearing on Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT) focused on security and other threats. Witnesses include former deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger and H.R. McMaster, the former national security adviser.

The uncertainty over Covid’s origins stems in part from limits China placed on the WHO-led investigative team. The group spent four weeks in China, including two weeks in quarantine. It was presented with reports by Chinese scientists and government officials but was denied access to the raw data behind their conclusions.

Early searches for the origins of the pandemic focused on a market in Wuhan where wild animals were sold, and where the first large Covid-19 outbreak likely occurred. Chinese and foreign public-health experts say it is impossible to say for certain whether that is where the virus first jumped to humans, in part because local officials destroyed most of the animals at the market in the early days of the outbreak.

Wuhan is home to several laboratories, some of which are engaged in coronavirus research. Food-safety specialist Peter Ben Embarek, the head of the WHO-led team, called for more information about a research facility run by the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, which had relocated in December 2019 – about the time when the virus first began to spread.

Workers in that lab told the WHO team that there were no incidents or mishaps that could have unleashed a virus. Chinese authorities have repeatedly disputed that the virus could have leaked from one of China’s labs and suggested it emerged outside the country.

“Relevant parties should stop stirring up the ‘laboratory leak’ argument, stop smearing China and stop politicising the traceability issue,” Ms Mao, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said.

An Energy Department spokesman declined to discuss details of its assessment but wrote in a statement that the agency “continues to support the thorough, careful, and objective work of our intelligence professionals in investigating the origins of Covid-19, as the President directed”.

The Wall Street Journal