White House touts Covid-19 ‘lab leak’ theory on new website

The White House on Friday morning launched a new website championing the theory that the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 was a manmade pathogen that leaked from an infectious disease laboratory in Wuhan, China.

The White House on Friday morning launched a new website championing the theory that the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 was a manmade pathogen that leaked from an infectious disease laboratory in Wuhan, China. The page revives a long debate about the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic that has seen investigations by federal agencies, global health organizations and congressional committees. The CIA in January issued a report concluding that a lab leak was likely, but with “low confidence” in that judgment, paralleling similar conclusions from the Energy and State departments. The CIA had previously said it did not have enough information to make a determination about where the virus originated. The World Health Organization has said it remains open to all hypotheses, including that the virus spread from animals to people in a Wuhan market. Yet the Trump administration’s new website takes the lab leak theory even further than most of those reports, stating that the virus “possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature” and “if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced. But it hasn’t.” The federal website Covid.gov, which previously linked to information about vaccines, testing and treatment, now redirects to the White House’s lab leak website. While US intelligence agencies have remained open to the possibility the virus was naturally transmitted during lab research, they nearly all previously agreed it was not genetically engineered. Many scientists believe, based on analyses of the virus and early cases, that the virus occurred naturally in animals and spread to humans in an outbreak at the Wuhan market. They’ve also said that the origin of the virus may never be proven.