COVID Lab Leak Theory Receives Boost as Department of Energy Joins FBI and Gets Closer: WSJ

In an article published Sunday, the WSJ writes that the US Department of Energy recently updated its assessment of the origins of the novel coronavirus behind the pandemic: while the department previously said it was undecided on the matter, it now calls the lab leak theory on most likely explanation.

The department shared its updated assessment, in which it has little faith, in a classified intelligence report made available to the White House and key lawmakers, the authorities said diaryquotes the people who read the report.

The department joins the FBI in supporting the lab leak theory, while four other agencies and a national intelligence panel believe the virus arose through natural transmission and two are undecided that diary wrote.

The origin of the pandemic has been hotly debated for years. The coronavirus was circulating in Wuhan, China in late 2019. The city was known for having a number of laboratories – including the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products – and was also considered the center of Chinese coronavirus research, with many of its laboratories being expanded or built after the SARS epidemic in the early 2000s.

On the other hand, like many others in China, the city was home to numerous wet markets where animals are sold and slaughtered. Many scientists theorize that the virus emerged from such a market.

Two comprehensive, peer-reviewed papers were published in July last year Science by an international team of scientists concluded that the coronavirus most likely jumped from a caged wild animal to humans at the city’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. Other scientists not involved in this study felt this was a blow to the lab leak theory.

“The studies do not completely rule out other hypotheses. But they absolutely push it to be animal in origin,” virologist Jeremy Kamil of Louisiana State University Health Shreveport told NPR at the time.

Adding to the lab leak theory were U.S. intelligence agencies that several researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology sought hospital care in November 2019 diary notes, although a House Intelligence Committee report released in mid-December last year found that these individuals may simply have had seasonal flu.

Republican lawmakers who took control of the House of Representatives last month are conducting investigations into the origins of the pandemic, as are their Senate counterparts, and fulfilling promises they made on the campaign trail for the past year.

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