The former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and experts told Congress on Wednesday the virus that sparked the COVID-19 pandemic had unusual features that lend credence to the Chinese lab-leak theory — a position that was downplayed by government scientists early in the crisis in favor of a natural-origin theory.
Dr. Robert Redfield, who led the CDC under President Donald Trump, pointed to the virus’s rapid transmission from human to human and swift evolution, plus “unusual actions” to downplay the virus in and around Wuhan in the fall of 2019.
His review of available data “indicates that COVID-19 more likely was the result of an accidental lab leak than the result of a natural spillover event. This conclusion is based primarily on the biology of the virus itself,” Dr. Redfield told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
Nicholas Wade, a former science editor at The New York Times, said virus researchers in Wuhan — the Chinese city where the pandemic began — and their U.S. intermediary wanted to engineer a furin cleavage site in coronaviruses to see if they could make it easier to infect mice, only to be turned down by the Department of Defense.
Mr. Wade said that work may have occurred anyway.
“The DOD turned the proposal down as too risky, but the researchers may well have found other ways to finance it. And they may have done much of the groundwork experimentation before applying for the grant, as is common practice,” he testified. “A year later, the [coronavirus] appears on the scene and guess what — it possesses a furin cleavage site, the only known member of its large family of viruses to do so.”
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Other scientists have published papers saying there is no evidence the cleavage site in the coronavirus was engineered by lab workers.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has insisted to Congress that the virus that caused the pandemic was not related to the viruses that its U.S. grantee, EcoHealth, worked on in Wuhan.
The new House GOP majority says its select subcommittee will try to figure out if the virus was the result of a spillover from nature or a lab leak. It says a serious probe of the matter is long overdue.
Subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup, Ohio Republican, said the question is fundamental to helping the U.S. prevent a future pandemic and protect its national security.
The virus was initially blamed on a wet market in Wuhan, where the virus was first detected in 2019 before spreading around the globe in early 2020 and killing nearly 7 million people, including over 1.1 million in the U.S.
The lab-leak theory, which was initially discredited as disinformation by the political left, gained credence late in the Trump administration and was bolstered by evidence that some workers at the Wuhan lab were hospitalized for flulike illness before the virus exploded across the city.
Mr. Wenstrup said the unprecedented nature of the virus and its features support the lab theory.
“COVID-19 has unique characteristics that made it very infectious to humans,” Mr. Wenstrup said. “These have never been seen before in any other viruses of its type.”
Questions about the coronavirus’s origins have split the U.S. government itself.
The Department of Energy recently concluded the coronavirus pandemic most likely resulted from a laboratory leak in China. It based its conclusion on new intelligence, further review of academic literature and consultations with experts outside the government.
Yet it did so with “low confidence,” meaning a level of uncertainty about the origins remained.
Multiple agencies have been trying to pinpoint the source of the virus for years.
The FBI concluded with moderate confidence that a lab leak was responsible for the virus’s spread, while intelligence agencies have determined with low confidence the virus emerged from natural channels, according to a review that President Biden ordered in 2021.
Dr. Fauci, who served as the main face of the COVID-19 response, was not at the hearing, but his name came up more than once.
Documents obtained by the subcommittee show that in February 2020, Dr. Fauci “prompted” a paper dismissing the theory that the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The paper came days after Dr. Fauci and other public health officials were warned the virus could have been genetically manipulated before emerging from the lab.
GOP investigators said the paper, titled the “Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” purportedly “skewed available evidence” to show that China was not responsible. Dr. Fauci repeatedly cited the paper to reporters and the public throughout 2020 to cast doubt on the lab-leak theory.
Dr. Redfield told the subcommittee that government scientists attached themselves to the natural-spillover theory early on and wanted to box out people like him who believed a lab leak had credence.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, Maryland Democrat, hit back by pointing to Mr. Trump’s praise of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s virus efforts in early 2020 and insistence the virus would go away on its own.
“Donald Trump was the biggest apologist in the United States of America for President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party,” Mr. Raskin said. “He could have directed the intelligence community to lead a COVID-19 origins investigation back in March of 2020, three years ago. He did not; he wasted precious time minimizing the risk of the virus and lavishing his praise on President Xi.”
Despite partisan bickering over the issue, the Chinese government was the top target for witnesses and lawmakers.
Jamie Metzl, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said stonewalling from Beijing is the main impediment to getting to the bottom of the virus’s origins, though said the U.S. should establish a bipartisan commission to examine the pandemic.
“I happened to be a Democrat, which is irrelevant to our work together,” Mr. Metzl said. “There is no smoking gun proving a laboratory origin hypothesis, but the growing body of circumstantial evidence suggests a gun that is at very least warm to the touch.”
Mr. Wade said the Chinese government wants to find evidence of natural origins but has been unable to find it.
“The natural origin camp got its story out first, always a very big help,” he said.
He also highlighted the Chinese government’s efforts to thwart the World Health Organization and other investigators who wanted insight into activities at the Wuhan lab.
“Innocent behavior would be to throw open the Wuhan Institute and all its viral samples, working papers and databases to anyone who wanted to look. The Chinese authorities have done the opposite,” Mr. Wade said.
The panel also took aim at gain-of-function research that can make viruses more dangerous as part of efforts to understand them and get ahead of pandemics.
Dr. Redfield said the risks outweigh the benefits. He called for a moratorium on that kind of research, saying it never stopped a pandemic.
“On the contrary, I think it probably caused the greatest pandemic our world has ever seen,” Dr. Redfield said.
GOP committee leaders said they will hold a number of hearings on COVID-19 origins and will compel information from the National Institutes of Health and its grantee, EcoHealth.
“We aren’t finished,” Mr. Wenstrup said. “We’re just beginning.”
• Haris Alic contributed to this story.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.