States keep up with lawsuits against China for 'malicious' role in COVID-19 pandemic

More than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, two Republican states are keeping up their efforts to hold China accountable for the spread of the virus that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and sparked an economic downturn from which the U.S. has still not recovered.

The virus is believed to have originated in Wuhan, and the secretive communist government was accused of downplaying the virus and misleading the world in the early days of the pandemic -- leaving other countries, including the U.S., exposed and without time to prepare. Legal experts have warned that the cases face long odds because foreign governments are generally granted immunity from domestic suits. But that doesn’t mean the Republican states plan on giving up holding the Chinese behemoth accountable.