Republican-Led Committee Backs COVID-19 Lab-Leak Theory

After a two-year congressional investigation into the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. lawmakers are supporting the theory that the virus originated in a Chinese laboratory.

On Monday, the Republican-led subcommittee set up to provide an “after action review” of the pandemic published a report—subtitled “The Lessons Learned and a Path Forward.” Chief among the report’s findings was that the virus “likely emerged” from a lab, with evidence suggesting that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was responsible.

More than 7 million COVID-19 patients have died worldwide since the virus first struck in late 2019, with more deaths recorded in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world. As of April, more than 1.2 million Americans were confirmed to have died from the illness and more than 111 million had been infected, according to the latest figures reported by the statistics site Worldometer.

At the height of the pandemic, the country’s efforts to tackle the virus and halt the spread proved controversial in some areas, with anger at mask mandates and a low uptake of vaccines among some demographics. Five years on, COVID-19 continues to blight the country, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a slight increase in positive tests during the week ending November 23.

Where Was the First COVID-19 Case Found?

The first confirmed cases of COVID-19 occurred in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019, although no one knew what the illness was at the time. Patients began to “experience the symptoms of an atypical pneumonia-like illness that does not respond well to standard treatments,” the CDC said.

Experts raced to analyze the mystery illness, and by January 2020, the World Health Organization described it as a “2019 Novel Coronavirus.” The following month, the WHO officially named it “COVID-19.”

In February 2020, the CDC announced the first confirmed U.S. case of COVID-19, with cases also confirmed in countries such as the U.K. and Italy. The virus subsequently spread rabidly around the globe.

What Does Congress’ Report Say About the Likely Origins of the Virus?

On Monday, Representative Brad Wenstrup, a Republican from Ohio who chairs the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, issued the 520-page document. In a cover letter, he laid out the report’s findings, adding that the subcommittee had “bipartisan consensus across multiple topics.”

The first topic on Wenstrup’s list: “The possibility that COVID-19 emerged because of a laboratory or research related accident is not a conspiracy theory.”

Page one of the report went further, saying, “SARS-CoV-2, the Virus that Causes COVID-19, Likely Emerged Because of a Laboratory or Research Related Accident.”

The report continued, “Four years after the onset of the worst pandemic in 100 years, the weight of the evidence increasingly supports the lab leak hypothesis.” It added that “more and more senior intelligence officials, politicians, science editors, and scientists increasingly have endorsed the hypothesis that COVID-19 emerged as the result of a laboratory or research related accident.”

The document cited several sources, including a State Department fact sheet, to support the idea of a lab leak. The fact sheet said, “The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illness.”

The WIV is also known to have engineered SARS-like coronaviruses previously, and “despite presenting itself as a civilian institution” it has a history of “secret projects with China’s military,” the fact sheet said.

Additionally, WIV researchers “probably did not use adequate biosafety precautions at least some of the time prior to the pandemic in handling SARS-like coronaviruses,” the report added, citing an Office of the Director of National Intelligence assessment from June 2023.

In 2018, the WIV and a partner called EcoHealth applied for a grant to “create a virus” with “the exact same feature that made humans susceptible to COVID-19 infection,” the report said.

The report also said, “Key evidence that would be expected if the virus had emerged from the wildlife trade is still missing.” For example, “no infected animal has been verified at the Wuhan market or its supply chain.”

Newsweek has contacted the White House via email for comment on the report.

Who Else Supports the Lab-Leak Theory?

The idea that the virus may have emerged from a lab arose early in the pandemic—with several conservative personalities, including then-President Donald Trump, supporting the theory.

In April 2020, Trump claimed to have seen evidence that suggested the virus came from the WIV, although he did not specify what the evidence was. “I’m not allowed to tell you that,” he told reporters at a White House briefing. He added: “We’re going to see where it comes from. We have people looking at it very, very strongly. Scientific people, intelligence people, and others. We’re going to put it all together. I think we will have a very good answer eventually. And China might even tell us.”

Mike Pompeo, then the U.S. secretary of state, said in April 2020 that “the mere fact that we don’t know the answers, that China hasn’t shared the answers, I think is very, very telling.” Pompeo pressed China to let outside experts into the lab “so that we can determine precisely where this virus began.”

The lab-leak theory was initially dismissed as a conspiracy theory by scientists, who argued that the virus likely emerged naturally in animals—specifically bats—before infecting humans in a process known as zoonosis. This theory received credence because Wuhan also has a market that sells exotic animals for human consumption.

In February 2021, the WHO said that although a lab leak could not be ruled out, it was “extremely unlikely.”

However, by May 2021, more scientists and political commentators thought the lab-leak theory was not so outlandish. That month, a U.S. intelligence report made its way into the media, saying three WIV researchers were treated in the hospital in November 2019, not long before the virus infected the city.

The subcommittee’s report suggests that U.S. politicians on both sides of the aisle now support the lab-leak theory. The congressional panel was convinced of the idea after meeting 25 times, conducting more than 30 transcribed interviews and reviewing more than 1 million pages of documents.

On Tuesday, Beijing criticized the report, accusing the U.S. of using the outbreak for “political manipulation,” Agence France-Presse reported. According to the outlet, Lin Jian, the spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said, “In the absence of any substantive evidence, the so-called U.S. report has concocted leading conclusions, slandered China (and) planted false evidence.”

He also said, “The authoritative scientific conclusion drawn by the China-WHO joint expert team … is that a laboratory leak is extremely unlikely.”