[Washington Examiner] The intelligence community is investigating whether COVID-19 originated through an accidental escape from a Wuhan lab or through a natural emergence, spy agency leaders confirmed, as they warned more broadly about the Chinese Communist Party’s influence efforts inside the United States.
Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, asked Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines about COVID-19’s origins during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on the worldwide threats assessment report, arguing, "We can't conclude definitively that the virus that causes COVID-19 emerged naturally until there’s been a transmission chain that’s been identified, how the virus evolved and transmitted between species, and to date, no such path of zoonotic transmission has been definitively identified." He asked if that was accurate, and the Biden spy chief confirmed the Wuhan lab was one of two main hypotheses.
"It is absolutely accurate the intelligence community does not know exactly where, when, or how COVID-19 virus was transmitted initially," Haines testified. "And basically, components have coalesced around two alternative theories. These scenarios are, it emerged naturally from contact with infected animals, or it was a laboratory accident, as you identified. And that is where we are right now. But we're continuing to work on this issue and collect information and to the best we can essentially to give you greater confidence in what the scenario is."
Officials from the Trump and Biden administrations said that the Chinese government worked to thwart an independent investigation into the origins of the coronavirus, which has killed 2.96 million people worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University. The United States has criticized China for a lack of transparency at the start of the pandemic and condemned China for spreading baseless conspiracy theories about COVID-19 originating with the U.S. military.
Rubio, the vice chairman of the committee, said an accidental lab escape was "plausible" and pointed to some reasons why he thought so, including that "researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology have demonstrated from their publication record that they were skilled at techniques in which they genetically modified bat coronaviruses," as well as that viruses such as SARS have escaped from Chinese labs in the past and that U.S. diplomats warned about subpar biosafety standards at the Wuhan lab in 2018.
A Trump State Department fact sheet on the Wuhan Institute of Virology declassified in mid-January assessed that lab workers fell ill with COVID-19-like symptoms in 2019, scientists there studied viruses genetically similar to SARS-CoV-2, and the Wuhan lab conducted secret experiments with the Chinese military as well as gain-of-function research. The Biden administration has not weighed in publicly on that.
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