Credit: Kyodo News/Sipa USA
China: Wuhan Institute of Virology in China
New York (77WABC) – A new report from Republicans says that COVID-19 leaked from the controversial Wuhan lab sometime before Sept. 12, 2019 — and that China’s government covered it up.
In a report led by Rep. Michael McCaul, it shows “a preponderance of the evidence proves that all roads lead” to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the bat-research lab that many believe the outbreak came from, and not a Chinese wet market.
Read the full Addendum to the Origins of COVID-19 here 👇🏻https://t.co/SBbgWUrxKk
— House Foreign Affairs Committee Majority (@HouseForeignGOP) August 2, 2021
“It is our belief the virus leaked sometime in late August or early September 2019,” said McCaul, who is the lead Republican in the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “When they realized what happened, Chinese Communist Party officials and scientists at the WIV began frantically covering up the leak, including taking their virus database offline in the middle of the night and requesting more than $1 million for additional security.”
“It is also concerning the scientific community told the American people for more than a year it was impossible to modify a virus without leaving a trace when this technology existed more than 14 years before the pandemic began,” the report says. “As this report lays out, researchers at the WIV were also able to successfully modify coronaviruses without leaving a trace as early as 2016. Therefore it is no longer appropriate for anyone to dismiss the notion this virus could have been genetically modified before it leaked from the WIV.”
The report also detailed what it called new and under-reported information about safety protocols at the lab, including a July 2019 request for a $1.5 million overhaul of a hazardous waste treatment system for the facility, which was less than two years old.
