May 26, 2021 - Washington, DC – Congressman Devin Nunes reports the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Republicans have released their interim report on the origin of the COVID-19 outbreak.

The report is available here.

Since 2012, Republican Members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence have been examining the growing threat to America posed by the Communist Chinese government and the People’s Liberation Army. This unclassified interim report is part of our ongoing efforts to ensure the American people are well-informed of this danger.

Executive Summary

To prevent or quickly mitigate future pandemics, it’s crucial for health experts and the U.S. Government to understand how the COVID-19 virus originated. International efforts to discover the true source of the virus, however, have been stymied by a lack of cooperation from the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Nevertheless, significant circumstantial evidence raises serious concerns that the COVID19 outbreak may have been a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

This evidence includes:

• China’s history of research lab leaks resulting in infections.

• Warnings from U.S. diplomats in China as early as 2017 that the Wuhan lab was conducting dangerous research on coronaviruses without following necessary safety protocols, risking the accidental outbreak of a pandemic.

• Gain of Function research being conducted at the Wuhan lab that made coronaviruses more infectious in humans.

• Several researchers at Wuhan lab were sickened with COVID-19-like symptoms in fall 2019.

• The involvement in the Wuhan lab of the Chinese military, which has a documented biological weapons program.

• Multiple indications of attempts by Beijing to cover up the true circumstances of the COVID-19 outbreak.

By contrast, little circumstantial evidence has emerged to support the PRC’s claim that COVID-19 was a natural occurrence, having jumped from some other species to humans. For example, Chinese authorities have failed to identify the original species that allegedly spread the virus to humans, which is critical to their zoonotic transfer theory.

There are also clear signs that U.S. Government agencies and academic institutions may have funded or collaborated in Gain of Function research at the Wuhan lab. At least some of this research was published even after the U.S. Government had paused these kinds of studies in the United States due to ethical concerns over their biowarfare applicability and their potential to accidentally unleash a pandemic.

To protect American citizens from future pandemics, the U.S. Government must place more pressure on China to allow full, credible investigations of the source of the COVID-19 pandemic and to allow probes of the likelihood that it resulted from a lab leak. The U.S. Government must also provide a full accounting of any American cooperation with the Wuhan lab’s coronavirus research, including the support of these projects through U.S. Government funds.
Source: Congressman Devin Nunes