China Continues to Block US Probe Into Origins of COVID-19, Lawmakers Say

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to hamper U.S. efforts to determine the origin of COVID-19, according to Reps. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) and Mike Turner (R-Ohio).

These comments were made by the lawmakers during an appearance. NBC’s “Meet the Press” Himes reported it on March 5. “may be forever” Washington didn’t know exactly from where the virus was born.

“We have so few facts because the Chinese regime has obfuscated,” said Himes, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

Sunday’s interview came after reports last month that the Department of Energy (DOE) had allegedly concluded in a classified document sent to the White House that a lab leak was the likely cause of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Wall Street Journal reported On February 26, a classified document was released and intelligence personnel informed the publication that they were aware of the existence. “low confidence” In the conclusion it is stated that there are no absolute guarantees in the laboratory leak theory.

Turner stated during Sunday’s NBC interview (Sunday, NBC) that no official statement from the DOE confirmed or denied the alleged classified documents.

‘No Direct Evidence’

“But let’s assume that they did,” Turner stated. “In all of this, because there’s no direct evidence, we don’t have China admitting it, we don’t have [the] Wuhan lab handing these things over, all this is being assessed by looking at other aspects of the release.”

Wuhan is the capital of central China’s Hubei Province and home to multiple laboratories, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). COVID-19 was first identified in an outbreak in the city in December 2019.

Some U.S. intelligence officers have suggested that COVID-19 may have originated from Wuhan, but others believe it is natural.

In February, FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed According to the bureau, the probable origin of the virus is likely to be from Africa. “lab incident” in Wuhan.

“The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origin of the pandemic are [sic] most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” Fox News interviewed Wray, who added that “work related to this continues and there are not a whole lot [of] details that are unclassified.”

Wray, like Himes and Turner, also noted that the Chinese regime has been “doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate” U.S. and other foreign nations’ efforts to probe the origins of COVID-19.

There is a debate over COVID-19 origins

However, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has said that it “was most likely caused by natural exposure to an animal infected with it or a close progenitor virus—a virus that probably would be more than 99 percent similar to SARS-CoV-2.”

Meanwhile, the Chinese regime has long dismissed the possibility of a lab leak and has accused Washington of “disregarding science,” Fake news and a propaganda campaign to attack Beijing.

Yet the CCP has also not allowed an independent investigation of WIV.

This is despite the fact that there are many other ways to do it. fact sheet released by the U.S. State Department on Jan. 15 stating that several researchers at the facility fell ill with symptoms similar to those caused by COVID-19 in the autumn of 2019. The same fact sheet also noted that WIV has worked on secret projects with the Chinese military, including classified animal experiments since at least early 2017.

“We have so few facts that inevitably different agencies are going to arrive at different conclusions,” Himes spoke on Sunday. “And when an agency slightly adjusts its interpretation as the Department of Energy may have done, that doesn’t mean that all of a sudden the government has a firm view. It may be forever before we actually know exactly what happened.”