Congress will again work to find out how the COVID-19 pandemic began, as House Republicans are relaunching their investigation and calling for current and former Biden administration officials to testify.
Among those they are asking to testify is Dr. Anthony Fauci, who stepped down from his role as the chief White House medical expert last year.
The 12-member Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis is investigating and examining the origins of the pandemic, and to do so, subcommittee chairman Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) and House Oversight and Accountability Committee chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY) are pressing senior officials in Biden’s administration.
Comer and Wenstrup are also looking to EcoHealth Alliance president Dr. Peter Daszak for information about the virus’s origins, the two shared in a statement.
Among the points that the subcommittee will investigate includes federal funding of potential gain-of-function research. Gain-of-function research is defined as research meant to enhance a virus’s ability to cause an infection. Scientists do this to help predict pandemics and develop cures should they occur.
Whether or not gain-of-function research was used plays a vital role in the claim that the virus originated from a lab in Wuhan, China. The claim also says that the lab was potentially receiving US funding.
This was a topic discussed last year by Republicans serving on the House Foreign Affairs Committee in a report that concluded the pandemic began with a virus originating from the lab in Wuhan.
Wenstrup commented on the upcoming investigation into the pandemic and its potential origins, saying that it must start with “where and how this virus came about so that we can attempt to predict, prepare or prevent it from happening again.”
“Government scientists and government-funded researchers have so far been less than forthcoming in their knowledge and actions, including work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and potential pandemic pathogens,” he said in a statement.
While the subcommittee will look to have experts like Fauci testify, they are also requesting phone records, officials’ calendars, and other communications that were delivered or received by the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases regarding the Wuhan Institute of Virology and any federal grants to EcoHealth Alliance.
Lawmakers will look to gain more information about the weeks and months leading up to the discovery of the virus and the pandemic that followed shortly after. However, Comer claims that the evidence is already supporting their claims of the virus coming from a Wuhan lab.
“Evidence continues to mount pointing to the virus leaking from an unsecure lab in Wuhan,” Comer said in his statement.
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