Report: COVID Likely Emerged From Lab Leak, Energy Dept Says

According to the Department of Energy COVID-19 probably arose from a leakage in a laboratory in China. Wall Street Journal This report was published on Sunday.

This was the basis of the department’s conclusion. “new intelligence,” according The Journal, and joins with the FBI as the only federal agencies that publicly support the so-called laboratory leak theory.

The FBI ended 2021 with “moderate confidence” The pandemic began with an epidemic. “laboratory accident,” According to a declassified intelligence document.

House Republicans made the same finding this month A probe was launched Investigating the causes of the coronavirus pandemic. The House Oversight Committee asked for information from the Biden Administration on the lab leak theory. Also, Dr. Anthony Fauci’s testimony, who was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, denied that COVID had leaked from a laboratory.

Republicans have been raising the possibility that coronavirus was leaked from Wuhan Institute of Virology. Democrats dismissed this idea as a conspiracy theory. Donald Trump’s resignation made President Joe Biden more open to the possibility. “was viewed as wanting to vilify China to deflect blame for his handling of the pandemic,” Current and former officials Submitted The Financial Times.

State Department officials warned that safety measures were being taken at Chinese laboratories studying coronaviruses, starting in 2018. Journal reported:

U.S. State Department cables dated 2018 and internal Chinese documents reveal that there were still concerns about China’s biosafety procedures. This has been cited by supporters of the laboratory-leak hypothesis.

Wuhan has a number of laboratories. Many of them were created or expanded after China’s traumatizing experience with the first severe acute respiratory syndrome (or SARS) epidemic in 2002. They include campuses of Wuhan Institute of Virology and Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Initial thought was that the virus originated from a Wuhan seafood-market outbreak. However, some scientists and Chinese public health officials now consider it a case of community spread, rather than the location where the first human infection occurred. The 2021 intelligence community report stated.