© Provided by Washington Examiner A document on the Wuhan Institute of Virology released by the Trump State Department is getting a second look as the Biden administration reportedly confirmed the accuracy of its data points while the World Health Organization investigates evidence that lab workers were sick before the pandemic began.
U.S. officials from the Trump and Biden administrations have said the Chinese government worked to thwart investigations into the origins of the virus, which turned into a pandemic that has killed 2.61 million worldwide, and a WHO report stemming from an early 2021 joint investigation with China is slated to be released next week.
Meanwhile, the Chinese government denies the coronavirus originated in the Wuhan lab and has cast doubt on the idea that it originated in China.
The State Department fact sheet released in mid-January contended that "the Chinese Communist Party has systematically prevented a transparent and thorough investigation of the COVID-19 pandemic's origin" and noted the United States had not determined the exact origin yet. It said Wuhan lab workers fell ill from a disease similar to COVID-19 or the flu in the fall of 2019 and said the Wuhan lab had engaged in gain-of-function research and conducted secret experiments with the Chinese military.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the Biden administration reviewed those claims and confirmed some of the facts.
"There wasn't significant or meaningful disagreement regarding the information presented in the fact sheet," an unnamed senior State Department official told the outlet. "No one is disputing the information, the fact that these data points exist, the fact that they are accurate."
"From the start, the fact sheet was a State Department messaging document, rather than some sort of complete accounting or intelligence-driven analytic product," the State Department official said. "There was certainly not consensus [inside the U.S. government] on the still unproven theory that this emerged from the lab."
In response to the story, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted, "Even the Biden admin admits my statement of facts about the Wuhan lab was based on real evidence. No one is disputing the fact that the info I provided was accurate."
A State Department spokesperson told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday, The fact sheet issued by the previous administration on January 15 did not draw any conclusions about the origins of the coronavirus." The spokesperson added, "We will work with our partners and draw on information collected and analyzed by scientific experts and our own intelligence community to evaluate the report," which the WHO will be releasing.
The fact sheet said that, for years, Wuhan lab researchers "conducted experiments involving RaTG13, the bat coronavirus identified by the WIV in January 2020 as its closest sample to SARS-CoV-2 (96.2% similar)." The Trump State Department also said the Wuhan lab "has a published record of conducting 'gain-of-function' research to engineer chimeric viruses." The fact sheet added that the Wuhan lab "has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017."
"The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses," the State Department fact sheet said, arguing that "this raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli's public claim that there was 'zero infection' among the WIV's staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses."
Dr. Sanjay Gupta said on CNN's New Day on Wednesday that he believed workers at the Wuhan lab were sick in 2019, prior to the global outbreak.
"Yes, there were people, lab workers who were sick. Okay, well, people do get sick of all different things. Was there evidence that that sickness was caused by this coronavirus? How would you answer that question? Well, one way you could do it was go back and check to see if they have antibodies to the coronavirus - did they have antibodies earlier than other people?" CNN's chief medical correspondent said. "So where we're sort of left with - and I've talked to people from the WHO about this - is that while there was evidence of illness, there didn't seem to be evidence that they had antibodies. Is it that they did have antibodies in the past, they don't now? That's what they're still trying to figure out."
During a February interview on Face the Nation on CBS, Matthew Pottinger, Trump's deputy national security adviser, said, "If you weigh the circumstantial evidence, the ledger on the side of an explanation that says that this resulted from some kind of human error, it far outweighs the side of the scale that says this was some natural outbreak." Pottinger said the fact sheet was "carefully crafted so as not to overstate the case that it was making."
On the same show, Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan criticized China for blocking data on the origins of COVID-19 but declined to stand by declassified U.S. intelligence. "I'm saying that I am not in a position, nor is the Biden administration in a position, to make a determination about precisely where COVID-19 originated," he said.
Pottinger said during an early February online discussion hosted by Florida International University that the fact sheet was "carefully vetted" by the Health and Human Services Department, the State Department, the White House, and leaders of U.S. intelligence.
Peter Ben Embarek, head of the WHO group that investigated the origins, said during a video interview in late February, "We didn't do an audit of any of these labs, so we don't really have hard facts or detailed data on the work done" at the Wuhan lab. In early February, Embarek said the possibility that the coronavirus might have escaped from the Wuhan lab didn't merit further inquiry, but days later, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said more study was needed.
While in Wuhan, Embarek announced four main hypotheses: direct transmission from animal to human, transmission through an intermediate species, transmission through frozen foods, and a "laboratory-related incident." He said a jump from animal to another animal to humans was most likely and an accidental lab release was "extremely unlikely."
Tags: News, China, State Department, Mike Pompeo, Coronavirus, Joe Biden, Donald Trump
Original Author: Jerry Dunleavy
Original Location: Biden team gives nod to Trump State Department fact sheet on Wuhan lab