US Congress presented a report on the laboratory origin of COVID-19

House Republican Chief Republican McCall of the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs presented a report on Monday, which states that evidence has been obtained supporting the version of a coronavirus leak from the laboratory of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The document was prepared following an investigation by Republican congressmen, writes The Hill.

“We now believe it is time to completely abandon the seafood market as the source of the virus,” the report said. In addition, most of the data collected indicates that the virus “leaked” from the Wuhan Institute, and this “happened sometime before September 12, 2019”, possibly even in August.

As noted in the document, there is “sufficient evidence” that scientists from the laboratory of the Chinese institute, with the assistance of American experts and government funds from China and the United States, worked on the modification of coronaviruses. transfers Interfax. And these works could be classified and unsafe at the same time.

“We know that the Wuhan Institute of Virology has conducted research on modifying coronaviruses, and we know that they were conducted in unsafe conditions,” said the congressman. This is confirmed, in particular, by the US State Department telegrams from 2018, in which American diplomats expressed concern about the low security measures adopted at the Wuhan Institute. The telegrams were first reported by The Washington Post in April 2020. Complaints related to hazardous waste treatment systems and indoor air conditioning for coronavirus research.

The report also indicates that scientists from the laboratory in Wuhan, as well as American colleagues who collaborated with them, had the opportunity to modify genetically modified viruses without leaving a trace of these operations.

“Back in 2005, American scientist Ralph Barick helped create a method that leaves no trace of genetic modification,” the report says. – And already in 2017, scientists working at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were able to do the same. This suggests that the claims of representatives of the scientific community that SARS-CoV-2 could not be created artificially, since it does not contain markers of genetic modification, are crafty. “

In a 2020 interview with Italian television, Barik said: “You can create a virus without leaving any trace. However, the answers you are looking for can only be found in the archives of the Wuhan Laboratory. “

McCall called on Congress to pass legislation sanctioning scientists from the Wuhan laboratory and members of the Chinese Communist Party who have obstructed the spread of information about COVID-19 and prevented a rapid response to this biohazard.

The congressman also proposed summoning American scientist Peter Dassak, who had been criticized earlier for signing an open letter in February 2020, to the lower house. It refuted the “laboratory” theory of the origin of the coronavirus, which, according to the authors of the letter, is based on nothing but xenophobia. The letter was published in the medical journal The Lancet and helped to divert attention from the issue of China’s responsibility for the spread of the coronavirus.

“It’s time to use all the tools the US government has to find out the whole truth about the origin of the virus,” McCall said.

China has denied leakage of the coronavirus from a facility in Wuhan. Experts from the World Health Organization, after inspecting the Wuhan laboratory, also concluded that such a leak was “extremely unlikely.” Experts decided that the new type of coronavirus was most likely transmitted to humans from bats through another animal. Another version of the origin of the virus – direct transmission to humans from an animal – was added to the list of hypotheses “from possible to probable.”

However, the UK and the US were skeptical about the results of the international investigation, which swept aside the “laboratory” version. London and Washington said China deliberately denied experts access to data and samples. In addition, the PRC did not immediately allow WHO experts to conduct research on its territory.

In May, US President Joe Biden instructed US intelligence agencies to “redouble efforts” to find the source of the coronavirus and report the results within 90 days.

WHO chief Tedros Adan Ghebreyesus admitted in June that a potential link between the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic and a virus leak from a Chinese laboratory had been ruled out too early. “I myself was a laboratory assistant, I am an immunologist, and I worked in a laboratory, and incidents occur in the laboratory,” said Tedros Ghebreyesus.

He was supported by German Health Minister Jens Spahn, who called on Chinese officials to allow further investigations into the origin of the virus. But Beijing has denied WHO a new search for the source of COVID-19 on its territory.

The rapid spread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has led to a pandemic. Over a year and a half, more than 4.2 million people have died from COVID-19 out of almost 200 million infected.