Roving Periscope: The US reopens Covid origin issue, says it may have spread from a Chinese lab

Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: As Sino-US relations deteriorate further and America goes to the presidential polls next year, the theory of the Covid-19 virus first circulating in Wuhan around November 2019 and spreading from a laboratory, has resurfaced.

And, if she became US President in 2024, Indian-origin hopeful Nikki Haley has vowed to cut all American aid to Communist China.

According to the media reports, the US Energy Department, which was earlier undecided on how the virus emerged, now said the bug leaked after a mishap at the Wuhan laboratory, in China. This conclusion surfaced in an update to a 2021 document by the office of the Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines.

The five-page update emerged when lawmakers, particularly the Republicans in the House of Representatives and the Senate, probed the origins of the pandemic and pressed the Biden administration and the intelligence community for more information.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had already concluded with “moderate confidence” in 2021 that the virus may have spread via a mishap in the Chinese laboratory.

The Energy Department’s conclusion, supporting the FBI’s assertion, has come after new intelligence emerged. This is significant because the agency has scientific expertise and oversees a network of US national laboratories, including those conducting advanced biological research, the reports said.

More than one million Americans died in the pandemic since its outbreak in January 2020.

So far, American intelligence agencies were divided over the origins of the coronavirus. Four agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, still believe that the pandemic was likely the result of natural transmission, and two are undecided. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is also undecided between the lab leak and natural transmission theories.

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said President Biden had repeatedly directed the intelligence community to invest in trying to discern as much as possible about the origins of the pandemic.

“President Biden specifically requested that the national labs, which are part of the Energy Department, be brought into this assessment because he wants to put every tool at use to be able to figure out what happened here,” Sullivan said.

The Covid-19 virus first circulated in Wuhan in November 2019, according to the US 2021 intelligence report. The pandemic’s origin has been the subject of vigorous debate among academics, intelligence experts, and lawmakers.

The emergence of the pandemic heightened tensions between the US and China, which US officials alleged was withholding information about the outbreak. It also led to a spirited and at times partisan debate in the US about its origin.

Beijing, which restricted investigations by the World Health Organization, disputed the virus could have leaked from one of its laboratories and even claimed it emerged outside China.

The fact that Wuhan is the center of China’s extensive coronavirus research, has led some scientists and US officials to argue that a lab leak is the best explanation for the pandemic’s beginning.

Wuhan is home to several laboratories, many of which were built or expanded as a result of China’s traumatic experience with the initial severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, epidemic beginning in 2002.

They include the Wuhan Institute of Virology campuses, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products, which produces vaccines.

With the Wuhan-leak theory resurfacing in the US, Haley took to Twitter on Tuesday, declaring to cut the American aid to China, and Pakistan. “Not a cent to Communist China,” she announced.

“I will cut every cent in foreign aid sent to our enemies. Biden administration resumed military aid to Pakistan and American taxpayers still give money to Communist China for ridiculous environment programs.”

In an opinion piece on February 24 for a daily tabloid, Haley criticized both the Democratic and Republican presidential administrations for how they handled foreign aid, noting that the United States spent USD 46 billion in 2022 to help countries like Iraq, Pakistan, and China.