Republicans are about to make their most comprehensive case yet, claiming that Wuhan experts may have genetically altered the virus.
House Republicans Investigated the Origin of COVID-19
In a recently published article in The Hill, the origins of COVID-19 are being investigated by a House Republican member, who is concerned that the pandemic was caused by a genetically engineered virus that escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese city where the virus was first identified in December 2019.
On Monday, Rep. Michael McCaul, the leading member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, published the third part of his inquiry into the virus's origins and the Chinese government's failure to warn the world about the pandemic's dangers.
The GOP inquiry is being conducted in tandem with attempts by the Biden administration and the international community to identify the origins of the pandemic, which has killed over 4.2 million people worldwide, infected almost 200 million others, and threw global stability into disarray.
Public health experts who favor attempts to figure out where the virus came from believed that such a study is critical to reducing the danger of another pandemic, according to a recently published article in Pehal News.
Results of the Investigation Heighten Speculations
According to a recent congressional study on the pandemic's beginnings, the Wuhan National Biosafety Lab sought bids months before the COVID-19 outbreak for significant upgrades to air safety and waste treatment systems in research buildings that operated for less than two years.
The air disinfection, hazardous waste, and central air conditioning initiatives raise concerns about how effectively these systems were working in the months leading up to the COVID-19 epidemic, according to a published article in FOX News,
The actual rationale for the procurement advertisement, as well as when or whether the work was ever started, are both unknown. It adds to the contentious notion that the pandemic started in a Wuhan lab with suspicious conduct and obfuscation from China's government, as well as indications that the pandemic started months earlier than originally thought.
How Was the Investigation Conducted Without the Cooperation of CCP?
Republicans on the Foreign Affairs Committee have built their case on a timeline that claims the virus escaped the Wuhan Institute of Virology "sometime prior to September 12, 2019" using project announcements published on the Chinese government's procurement website, as well as other open-source data, interviews with former administration officials and scientists, research papers, and international press reports.
Additionally, Wuhan University, which is less than a mile from the WIV's headquarters, issued a warning for laboratory inspections on that day. The WIV's viral sequencing database vanished from the internet a few hours later. According to the article, later that evening, the institution issued a request for proposals for "security services" at the lab, which include gates, guards, video monitoring, security patrols, and staff to manage the registration and reception of foreign employees.
Major General Chen Wei, a specialist in biology and chemical warfare defenses, assumed charge of the Wuhan Institute's biosafety level-4 facility in late 2019 based on evidence from a former senior U.S. official. According to the study, this timing indicates that the Chinese Communist Party was worried about the activities occurring there as word of the virus spread.
Related Article : Former CDC Chief Believes COVID-19 Escaped From Wuhan Lab
