After a 2-year investigation, a House of Representatives committee investigating the COVID-19 pandemic has released a wide-ranging final report criticizing the actions of several U.S. science agencies and concluding that SARS-CoV-2 did not originate naturally, as many scientists think, but likely leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China.
The Republican-led Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic conducted more than 30 interviews, held numerous hearings, often fiery and partisan, and reviewed more than 1 million pages of documents. The panelists heard from scientists on both sides of the debate about the origins of the virus. And they grilled officials such as Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), about his institute’s role in research some committee members think could have started the pandemic.
The committee’s 520-page report, released on 2 December, offers no new direct evidence of a lab leak, but summarizes a circumstantial case, including that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) used NIAID money to conduct “gain-of-function” studies that modified distantly related coronaviruses.
In an unexpected revelation, the committee’s report also provided emails indicating the Department of Justice (DOJ) had empaneled a grand jury to look into unspecified potential crimes related to the origin of COVID-19 and had subpoenaed documents from the EcoHealth Alliance, which used NIAID funding to collaborate with the Wuhan lab. The nonprofit denied to the House panel it was the target of any DOJ investigation, and DOJ has not publicly confirmed such a probe took place or is ongoing.
Democrats on the panel released their own report challenging many of their colleagues’ conclusions about COVID-19 origins. They conclude, for example, that the viruses studied at WIV with EcoHealth funding were too distantly related to SARS-CoV-2 to cause the pandemic. They also strongly defended Fauci.
The Republicans’ report, led by committee chair Representative Brad Wenstrup (R–OH), extended far beyond the origin controversy, for example concluding that:
- The World Health Organization “caved” to the Chinese Communist Party and allowed it to conceal the severity of the pandemic.
- Masking and vaccine mandates, school closures, and lockdowns were of questionable value, and U.S. public health officials put forth conflicting, opaque messaging on those issues and more.
- Operation Warp Speed, launched by then-President Donald Trump to develop COVID-19 vaccines in record time, was a success and a model for future pandemics. But the report also criticized the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for pressuring its senior scientists to accelerate full approval of one of the vaccines.
“This work will help the United States, and the world, predict the next pandemic, prepare for the next pandemic, protect ourselves from the next pandemic, and hopefully prevent the next pandemic,” Wenstrup concludes in a cover letter to Congress.
The subcommittee will meet tomorrow to formally approve the report before submitting it to the congressional record.
https://www.science.org/content/article/house-panel-concludes-covid-19-pandemic-came-lab-leak
Comments