The congressional investigations into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic are casting a shadow over the face-to-face meeting between President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday.
Although Biden and Xi have many topics to discuss at this week's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco, Republicans in the House and Senate believe that the exact origins of SARS-CoV-2 is important enough to be on the list.
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Chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) told the Washington Examiner that the "devastation that the world has undergone" due to COVID-19 demands substantial answers.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that there were 1.15 million American deaths between 2020 and 2023 that involved COVID-19, nearly 10% of the total deaths over the past three years. Global death tolls from COVID-19 have surpassed 3.4 million worldwide, which the World Health Organization said is likely an underestimate.
The pandemic also cost the U.S. economy an estimated $14 trillion, hampering the GDP by twice the size of the 2007-2009 recession and 20 times more than the economic cost of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
"President Biden should press President Xi on why, if they were aware of COVID-19 or a bad virus ... did they hide it from the rest of the world?" said Wenstrup.
Although Wenstrup doubts that Biden will broach the topic of COVID-19 origins to Xi on Wednesday, Wenstrup noted that the congressional pressure will likely weigh heavily on the shoulders of Chinese leaders.
In April, Wenstrup's subcommittee received an email from a counselor from the Embassy of the People's Republic of China that expressed "grave concern" about and "firmly [opposed]" the COVID-19 origins investigation.
Wenstrup responded to the letter's demand for scientists to conduct the investigation by noting that seven physicians — two Democrats and five Republicans — sit on the subcommittee and by asking five Chinese researchers affiliated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to testify before Congress. Wenstrup's letter has received no reply.
Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Morgan Griffith told the Washington Examiner that the evidence reviewed thus far by Congress is "pretty clear [that] it came from the lab, and it's probably an accident."
According to both Wenstrup and Griffith, in late 2019, Chinese officials at the Wuhan Institute of Virology purged information related to several genetic sequences of coronaviruses being worked on in the lab, likely linked to SARS-CoV-2, after several researchers fell ill with symptoms resembling COVID-19. U.S. taxpayer dollars through the National Institutes of Health partially funded projects at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through grants given to Eco Health Alliance, a preeminent coronavirus research organization.
"I'm not saying they created [SARS-CoV-2] on purpose, but the fact that we don't have the written documents [and] the fact that we don't have the gene sequences [of the virus are] just plain wrong," said Griffith.
Earlier this month, the House Energy and Commerce and Oversight committees jointly subpoenaed leadership from the Department of Health and Human Services due to the Biden administration's unwillingness to comply with the congressional investigation into the origins of COVID-19, including information regarding NIH oversight of Eco Health Alliance research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Senior HHS staff have told Congress that they are unable to respond to the depth and breadth of the requests from various committees due to severely limited manpower and technical capacity in the record keeping for HHS.
"For three years, I’ve called on the Biden administration to declassify and release all materials related to the origins of COVID-19," Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), an outspoken critic of COVID-19 policy, told the Washington Examiner. "This administration continues to stonewall my requests and hide important documents from the American public."
Last week, the Senate confirmed Monica Bertagnolli as the new permanent director of the NIH, taking over the position from acting Director Lawrence Tabak. Although Bertagnolli said she would comply with congressional investigations into COVID-19, several conservative senators, including Paul, did not vote for her confirmation.
Griffith said that he is "hopeful" that Bertagnolli's leadership will "be a good change."
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Wenstrup does not know if the switch will make a difference in the investigation considering that the primary persons of interest, including former NIH Director Francis Collins and former director of the National Institute on Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci, have retired from public service.
"The American people deserve to know the truth about the origins of COVID-19," Paul said.