China lab leak: GOP report shows virus leaked from Wuhan lab; scientists' probe underway

The novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) that has claimed 4,247,960 lives globally leaked from China’s Wuhan lab sometime before Sept. 12, 2019, a new Republican-led investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 disease has found. The GOP report published on Monday, August 2 suggests that “a preponderance of the evidence prove that all roads [to coronavirus outbreak] lead to the Wuhan Institute of Virology” and that Chinese Communist Party of President Xi Jinping attempted the “greatest coverup of all time” by eliminating the earliest evidence of the 'lab leak'. 

In the 84 page document, the GOP claimed that the United States ‘The House Foreign Affairs Committee Minority Staff’ has continued to investigate the origins of COVID-19, examining new information as it became available, including through expert testimony.

Based on the material collected and analyzed by the Committee Minority Staff, the preponderance of evidence suggests SARS-CoV-2 was accidentally released from a Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratory sometime prior to September 12, 2019. The virus, or the viral sequence that was genetically manipulated, was likely collected in a cave in Yunnan province, PRC, between 2012 and 2015—GOP report. It shockingly states that researchers at the WIV, officials within the CCP, and “potentially American citizens” directly engaged in efforts to obfuscate information related to the origins of the coronavirus. 

“We have done research because approximately 48 million of our population are under the age of 12 and without access to a vaccination,” it stated, explaining why the experts prepared the addendum. “It is our belief the virus leaked sometime in late August or early September 2019,” lead Republican in the House Foreign Affairs Committee,  Rep. Michael McCaul said in the declassified report.

“When they realized what happened, Chinese Communist Party officials and scientists at the WIV began frantically covering up the leak, including taking their virus database offline in the middle of the night and requesting more than $1 million for additional security,” McCaul added. He stressed that this coverup was “too late – the virus was already spreading throughout the megacity of Wuhan.” 

In the report, McCaul states that there was a suspicious request made in July 2019 for a $1.5 million overhaul of a hazardous waste treatment system for the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which, at the time was just 2 years old. CCP made a request for the maintenance of the “environmental air disinfection system” and “hazardous waste treatment system,” which indicated that the systems installed for preventing the lab leaks were functioning.

Furthermore, the satellite and geo-mapping intelligence data showed that hospitals in Wuhan had started witnessing an influx of patients from September, this was due to COVID-19 contagion spread. McCaul exposes  Peter Daszak of the New York-based EcoHealth Alliance and Wuhan lab’s “Batwoman” lead scientist Shi Zhengli, both of whom, he said were engaged in dismissing the lab-leak theory. 

While calling on the US Congress to “sanction scientists at the WIV and CCP officials who participated in this coverup,”  Rep. Michael McCaul said that it’s “time to completely dismiss the wet market as the source of the COVID-19 outbreak.” 

“We know gain-of-function research was happening at the WIV and we know it was being done in unsafe conditions. We also now know the head of the Chinese CDC and the director of the WIV’s BSL-4 lab publicly expressed concerns about safety at PRC labs in the summer of 2019,” he said, adding that the coronavirus leaked in late August or early September 2019.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials and the scientists at the WIV began scrambled to frantically “cover up the leak”. This included taking down the virus database offline in the middle of the night, and requesting more than $1 million for additional security, the wide-ranging report found. “But their coverup was too late – the virus was already spreading throughout the megacity of Wuhan. Within a month, satellite images show a significant uptick in the number of people at hospitals around the WIV with symptoms similar to COVID-19.

At the same time, athletes at the Military World Games became sick with symptoms similar to COVID-19,” said Rep. Michael McCaul. And it was at this point that the players carried the coronavirus back to their home countries from China and by November 2019, countries who participated in China’s military games reported early cases of ‘pneumonia-like' COVID-19 respiratory disease. 

“This was the greatest coverup of all time and has caused the deaths of more than four million people around the world, and people must be held responsible,” McCaul said, accusing China, citing the trove of evidence.

“It’s time to “completely dismiss the wet market as the source of the outbreak,” he asserted, adding that the pandemic has caused the deaths of more than 4 million citizens globally, and people behind it must be held responsible.

Key evidence from GOP report

• WIV lab scientists, who were aided by US experts and Chinese and US government funds were experimenting the coronaviruses to genetically engineer them to infect humans. “It is self-evident that Shi and her colleagues, with funding and support from Daszak, were actively genetically manipulating coronaviruses and testing them against human immune systems in 2018 and 2019, before the beginning of the pandemic,” the report alleges. 
• The report argues against those who reject the lab-leak theory saying that researchers at WIV “were able to successfully modify coronaviruses without leaving a trace as early as 2016.” This gives rise to the notion that this virus “could have been genetically modified before it leaked from the WIV.” 
• There were “significant concerns about the safety protocols” at the lab. In 2018, US State Department officials warned about “a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory.”
• In 2019, the lab requested a $1.5 million overhaul of its “environmental air disinfection system.” “Such a significant renovation so soon after the facility began operation appears unusual,” the report says. For example, “faulty central air conditioning likely resulted in lower than ideal air circulation and enabling viral particles to remain suspended in the air longer,” experts believed. 
• On the night of September 12, 2019, “urgent inspections” were called for the lab, and the lab’s viral sequence database “disappeared from the internet.” The virus escaped the lab “sometime prior to September 12, 2019”. The database was mysteriously removed as “it contained key information about each sample, including what type of animal it was collected from, where it was collected, whether the virus was successfully isolated, the type of virus collected, and its similarity to other known viruses.”
• She later gave several conflicting answers about the database outage, blaming the staff members. 
• In the evening of September 12, as a matter of urgency, the institute published an announcement for bids for “security services at the lab to include gatekeepers, guards, video surveillance, security patrols, and people to handle the ‘registration and reception of foreign personnel.’” 
• Immediately in January 2020, People’s Liberation Army’s Major General Chen Wei, in charge of China’s chemical weapon defences takes control of the Wuhan lab. This contradicts Shi’s statement that military researchers do not work with the WIV. “Her denial and the scrubbing of the website appear to be obvious attempts to obfuscate the PLA’s involvement with the WIV,” the report says. 
• Satellite imagery of Wuhan in September and October show a surge in hospital visits as “five out of the six hospitals closest to the lab had the highest relative daily volume of cars in the parking lot in September and October 2019”, and internet searches for “pneumonia-like symptoms” increased. 
• “Since COVID-19 can infect humans without causing symptoms, an untold number of athletes and volunteers become infected, but are asymptomatic and unaware they are infectious,” the report hypothesis suggests.