Biden signs the Covid Origin Act to disclose intel on Wuhan Lab

President Joe Biden signed legislation on Monday ordering the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify information about any potential connections between a lab in China and the Covid-19 pandemic's origins.

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Earlier this month, the bill was passed by both the House and the Senate by unanimousity. Once the Energy Department came to the "low confidence" conclusion that the virus is most likely the product of an unintentional laboratory leak in China, there has been a campaign to make sensitive information about the pandemic's origins public.

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In line with his constitutional duty to guard against the revealing of material that would jeopardize national security, Biden stated in a statement, "My Administration will declassify and release as much of that information as is practicable in executing this Act."

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Avril Haines, director of national intelligence, has 90 days to declassify all information on potential connections between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origins of Covid. This is in accordance with the law. A significant hub of Coronavirus research has been the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

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According to Christopher Wray, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the investigation has also determined that a lab mishap in Wuhan, China, most likely served as the catalyst for the epidemic.

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"The FBI has judged that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a probable lab mishap in Wuhan for quite some time now," Wray said on Fox News. "In this case, you're talking about a possible leak from a lab under Chinese government supervision."

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The Energy Department's evaluation was first published by The Wall Street Journal, according to sources who read a classified report. Jake Sullivan, national security adviser to the White House, would not confirm or reject the report. However, he said that Biden had expressly asked that the Energy Department's national labs take part in an investigation into how the pandemic began.

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Although the method of Covid's human population spread is still unknown, the pandemic started three years ago in Wuhan, China. A Biden-ordered assessment from 2021 that examined data on the pandemic's genesis revealed disagreement across the intelligence community. The intelligence agencies concurred that a lab mishap and an infected animal were both tenable theories.

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In the 2021 report, four unspecified agencies came to the cautious conclusion that an infected animal had infected humans.

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International researchers recently discovered raccoon dog genetic material in samples from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market that tested positive for Covid. While the investigation cannot conclusively show that the raccoon dogs were virus-infected, it does offer some relevant information that is compatible with a potential virus spillover from animals to humans.

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The samples were obtained by scientists from a global database. After that, the samples vanished from the database. On Friday, the World Health Organization demanded that Beijing release the samples.

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WHO Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated, "These statistics could have—and should-be been disclosed three years ago. We keep urging China to share data transparently, undertake the required inquiries, and report the findings.”