The US Senate has voted unanimously to pass a bill that calls on the Biden administration to declassify the intelligence about the origin of COVID-19. Announcing the same, Republican Josh Hawley, the Senator from Missouri, tweeted, “Tonight, the Senate unanimously passed my bill to declassify all the intelligence the government has on COVID-19 origins. Let the people see the truth!”
Republican congressmen had asked the Department of Energy (DoE), the Department of State and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for documents related to the probe into the origins of the coronavirus. Politico reported that the request for the papers arose after a Wall Street Journal report said that the DoE had concluded that the pandemic most likely arose from a Chinese laboratory leak.
A WHO and China joint report published in 2021 noted that the virus travelled from bats to another animal, subsequently infecting humans. However, it wasn’t made clear how the virus reached the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan. Lab leak was being cited as a reason, and earlier this week, FBI said that Wuhan lab leak was the most plausible reason for the emergence of the COVID-19 virus.
Speaking on Fox News on Tuesday, FBI director Christopher Asher Wray said that the bureau believes COVID-19 “most likely” originated in a “Chinese government-controlled lab”. According to the BBC, it is the first public confirmation of the FBI’s classified judgment of how the pandemic virus emerged.
China hit back at the claims, with spokeswoman for China’s foreign ministry, Mao Ning, condemning Wray’s allegations about the origin of the coronavirus and asserted that they only damage US credibility.
There has been a divide in the US government over the origins of Covid-19. A 2021 report issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence revealed that the National Intelligence Council, along with four other unidentified agencies, in a low-confidence assessment believe that the initial Covid-19 infection “was most likely caused by natural exposure to an animal infected with it or a close progenitor virus.”
(With inputs from agencies)