A United States Congressional committee charged with investigating the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic released a preliminary report on Monday affirming that the leak from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, is “the hypothesis the most plausible” to explain the origin of the virus. The document, more than 500 pages long, will be presented on Wednesday after two years of investigation carried out by the subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic, created in February 2023 after the Republicans regained the majority in the House of Representatives.
The chairman of this subcommittee, Brad Wenstrup, a Republican elected official and a podiatrist by profession, declared that this report aims to draw lessons for the future. “This work will help the United States, and the world, predict, prepare for, protect against, and – hopefully – prevent the next pandemic,” he said.
Two years of investigation and hearings
After hearing 38 witnesses, conducting 25 hearings and collecting numerous evidence, the Republican and Democratic members of the commission claim to have reached a “consensus” on certain key points, including that “the possibility that Covid-19 emerged from a laboratory or research accident is not a conspiracy theory.” To support this hypothesis, the report puts forward five main reasons, including the fact that “the virus has a biological characteristic not present in nature”.
This debate on the origin of Covid-19 has become a major geopolitical issue between the United States and China. From the start of the pandemic, Donald Trump, then president, claimed, without providing evidence, that the virus came from a Chinese laboratory. These accusations were firmly rejected by Beijing, which continues to defend the hypothesis of a natural transmission of the virus to humans.
More than 1.1 million deaths in the United States
In June 2023, a US intelligence report concluded that there was no evidence that Covid-19 was created in a laboratory. At the same time, recent scientific work has continued to explore other avenues.
Despite these investigations, the international scientific community still cannot determine with certainty the origin of the virus. The congressional committee report, although favoring a laboratory leak, leaves open the possibility of zoonotic transmission. With more than 1.1 million deaths, the United States remains the country hardest hit by the pandemic.
