March 6, 2023 Updated: March 6, 2023
Laboratory technicians
wearing personal protective equipment working on samples to be tested for
COVID-19 at the Fire Eye laboratory, a COVID-19 testing facility, in Wuhan,
Hubei Province, China, on Aug. 4, 2021. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)
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).
The lawmakers made the
comments during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that
aired on March 5, when Himes noted that it “may be forever” before Washington
knows exactly where the virus originated from.
“We have so few facts
because the Chinese regime has obfuscated,” said Himes, the ranking
Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.
The interview follows
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 the
classified document on Feb. 26 and intelligence officials told the publication
that there’s “low confidence” in the conclusion, meaning that there isn’t
absolute certainty in the lab leak theory.
Turner,
the Intelligence Committee’s chairman, noted during the NBC interview
that there has been no official comment from the DOE confirming or denying the
alleged classified document.
‘No
Direct Evidence’
“But let’s assume that
they did,” Turner said. “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, the capital of
China’s Hubei Province, is 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.
While some U.S.
intelligence officials have said that the virus that causes COVID-19 might have
come from the Wuhan lab, others have argued that it has a natural origin.
In February, FBI
Director Christopher Wray confirmed that the
bureau assessed that the origin of the virus was likely a “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,” Wray told Fox News. “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 COVID-19’s origins.
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.”
The Chinese regime has
long dismissed the possibility of a lab leak and has accused Washington of
“disregarding science,” fabricating lies, and engaging in a smear campaign
against Beijing.
Yet the CCP also hasn’t
allowed an independent investigation of the WIV.
That’s despite a 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 the
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 said during the NBC interview. “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.”
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