COVID-19: US House of Republicans claim Dr Fauci downplayed info on Wuhan lab leak theory

Chief medical advisor to US President Joe Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci "intensionally" downplayed laboratory information on COVID-19, two Republican Congressman wrote in a letter to the Secretary for Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra on Tuesday. Citing newly released documents, Republican James Comer and Jim Cordan accused Dr Fauci of concealing data from the public about the "(Wuhan) lab-leak theory." In a tweet, Comer stated that "Fauci took the theory much more seriously than he publicly let on."

In the letter to Becerra, the Republicans claimed that Dr. Fauci was aware of details about the potential COVID-19 virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and the possibility that the information was conveyed to the rest of the government and whether this information would have changed the US response to the pandemic. "Despite doctor for claiming otherwise on multiple occasions, in fact, he was aware of the military relationship between NIAID, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), EcoHealth Alliance Inc. and the WIV by January 27, 2020," the Comer and Cordan's report said, citing excerpts from the emails from NIH.

Formally calling for a "transcribed interview" from Dr. Fauci, the letter said that "it is imperative that we investigate this information was conveyed to the rest of the Government and the information would have changed the US response to the pandemic." They further argued that the exclusive meeting was necessary to ascertain if the concerns about potential theories of the COVID virus were shared with Dr. Fauci's superiors. The accusations come after the World Health Organisation (WHO) last year sent experts to Wuhan and concluded that a lab leak was "extremely unlikely."

COVID lab origins conundrum

Since the emergence of the novel Coronavirus in late 2019, there has been a myriad of conspiracy theories about potential accidental release of the virus from Wuhan labs. While US Republicans, including ex-President Donald Trump, hinged on the theory, China has repeatedly denied such claims as "fringe." In a counterattack, Beijing-based propagandists had pushed a hypothesis suggesting the virus was developed in the US from a military installation in Maryland, about 80km from Washington DC. The volatile debate has now continued for nearly two years, with experts warning that the theories hinder efforts to study the actual origin of the virus.

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