On Monday, US lawmakers concluded a two-year investigation into Covid-19 outbreak which killed 1.1 million Americans – supporting the theory that the virus probably leaked from a Chinese laboratory.
The 520-page report by the Republican-controlled House Subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic looked at the response at the federal and state levels, as well as the origins of the pandemic and vaccination efforts.
“This work will help the United States and the world to predict the next pandemic, prepare for the next pandemic, protect against the next pandemic, and hopefully prevent the next pandemic,” Commission Chairman Brad Wenstrup said in a letter to Congress.
American federal agencies, the World Health Organization and scientists around the planet have come to different conclusions about the most likely origin of Covid-19, but no consensus has been reached.
Most believe it spread from animals in China, but a US intelligence analysis said last year that the virus may have been genetically modified and escaped from a virology laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where human cases first emerged.
A congressional panel became convinced of the lab leak theory after meeting 25 times, conducting more than 30 transcribed interviews and reviewing more than a million pages of documents.
The investigation included two days of closed-door interviews with Anthony Fauci, a government scientist who became the country’s most trusted expert in the chaotic early days of the 2020 outbreak.
Fauci’s clashes with former and future President Donald Trump over the response sparked outrage on the right, and he now lives with security protection after death threats against his family.
Republicans accuse the 83-year-old immunologist of helping to trigger the century’s worst pandemic by approving funding to Chinese scientists accused of producing the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes Covid-19.
Among its main findings, the report said the National Institutes of Health did indeed fund controversial “enhancement of function” research — which seeks to improve viruses as a way to find ways to fight them — at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Fauci angrily denied covering up the origins of Covid-19 before a panel in June, claiming it would be “molecularly impossible” for bat viruses studied in the lab to turn into the virus that caused the pandemic.
But the panel’s report said SARS-CoV-2 “probably arose from a laboratory or research accident.”
Angry response in Beijing
Beijing hit back at the report on Tuesday, saying it had “no credibility” and accusing the United States of using the outbreak for “political manipulation”.
“The authoritative scientific conclusion of the joint expert team of China and the World Health Organization … is that a leak from the laboratory is highly unlikely,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said at a regular news conference.
“In the absence of any substantial evidence, the so-called US report fabricated leading conclusions, slandered China (and) planted false evidence,” he said.
The inquiry also found that the quarantines “did more harm than good” and that the mask mandates were “ineffective in controlling the spread of Covid-19”, contradicting other research showing that masking in public does indeed reduce the rate of transmission.
Social distancing guidelines have also come in for criticism, although travel restrictions were seen as saving lives.
Investigators found that Trump’s Operation Warp Speed ​​— a publicly funded project to develop a vaccine against Covid — was a “tremendous success” but that closing schools would have a “lasting impact” on American children.
