Lab leak debate: US releases new report, but critics want more

New leaks and a declassified intelligence report have revived debate about how the COVID-19 pandemic started, and renewed calls for greater transparency not only from China but also the U.S. government.

Earlier this month, news reports citing unnamed U.S. officials – including in the intelligence community – said that a key coronavirus researcher in Wuhan, China, was hospitalized with COVID-19-like symptoms in November 2019. The revelation heightened speculation that the pandemic may have started with an accidental lab leak, and put new pressure on the Biden administration to share what it knows.

The director of national intelligence, mandated by Congress this spring to provide “any and all information” on links between the Wuhan lab and the pandemic’s origin, issued a 10-page summary on Friday. The document adds little to what was already known, however, reflecting either the intelligence community’s inability or unwillingness to make precise determinations about what sparked a costly global pandemic. In particular, it lacks key details Congress had asked for, including the names, roles, and symptoms of several of the lab’s researchers who were reportedly hospitalized.

A classified annex with some additional information will be provided to Congress, in order to protect agencies’ sources and methods. But some lawmakers say it’s not just them but the American people who deserve answers.

“President Biden should follow through with what Congress has required: to declassify all information we need to help answer one of the most important public health questions of our lifetime,” said GOP Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, who chairs the House committee overseeing public health agencies. “Doing so is critical to holding China accountable for its cover-up of the virus’ origin and being prepared to prevent the next pandemic. The American people deserve it.”

While the main push for transparency has come from those advocating further examination of the lab leak theory, some who believe the spillover most likely occurred naturally also say more information should be released. The challenge in the wake of a divisive pandemic is how to pursue that transparency in a way that doesn’t further politicize the issue and undermine the already eroded trust in public health officials. Whatever is uncovered could have major implications for not only U.S.-China relations, but also funding for scientific research and future pandemic prevention.

“I want the facts,” said Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell of Michigan at the first hearing held by a new select committee on COVID-19 origins this spring. She noted that she had been among the first in the early days of the pandemic to call Robert Redfield – a virologist and former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who testified at the hearing that he believed a lab leak was most likely – about what had happened in Wuhan.

But many Democrats distrust the motives and approach of Republicans, particularly those who have vilified top figures like Dr. Anthony Fauci, whose agency oversaw grants for virology research, including in the Wuhan lab. He has been accused of directing public attention away from the lab leak theory, including by misleading Congress on the nature of U.S.-funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“We cannot go down a dangerous path by pushing unfounded conspiracies about Dr. Fauci and other long-serving career public health officials,” added Congresswoman Dingell, pointing to statements by him and others supporting the investigation of both COVID-19 origins theories.

A divisive debate

Early on in the pandemic, U.S. public health officials and scientists in related fields dismissed the hypothesis that the pandemic could have originated in a Chinese lab as a xenophobic conspiracy theory. That largely shut down debate on the issue.

But in the ensuing months, a band of independent researchers, small nonprofits, and a handful of journalists began investigating whether the pandemic may have started at the Wuhan lab.

Among the information they unearthed via requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act were private communications among public health officials and scientists that showed that initially, they had more questions and concerns about a possible lab leak than they had let on publicly.

Researchers also found a 2018 grant proposal to the U.S. military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) which, though rejected, showed that U.S. researchers and their collaborators in Wuhan had the interest and ability to manipulate coronaviruses to make them more contagious to humans.

The greatest challenge to transparency has been China’s refusal to share data, samples, and lab records. But some critics at home started to question why the U.S. government was not taking a more proactive role in determining what it could about the lab leak hypothesis – either to put it to rest, or to pressure China for answers.

“Why do we need FOIA lawsuits to learn basic facts about what research the U.S. government has been funding?” asks Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, who led The Lancet COVID-19 Commission that faulted numerous governments for a lack of transparency and urged further scientific investigation of both COVID origins hypotheses in its September 2022 report. Professor Sachs, who initially favored the natural origins theory but now sees a lab leak as a more likely hypothesis, has been criticized for dismissing from the commission scientists whom he said had conflicts of interest.

“It’s clear that the U.S. government lied repeatedly when it downplayed or even denied the possibility of a lab leak,” he says. “There has been no transparency of the government, which knows a lot more than it has so far told the public.” 

Until Friday, the Biden administration had produced only one report on COVID-19 origins: an inconclusive 17-page intelligence assessment published in October 2021. Several agencies assessed (with low confidence) that the pandemic had a natural origin, while one assessed (with moderate confidence) that it began with a lab leak, and others others were undecided.

Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University, says he had pushed for greater transparency from intelligence agencies, particularly after FBI Director Christopher Wray came out in late February and confirmed reports that the FBI was the agency that leaned toward the lab leak hypothesis. His confirmation came days after a report that the Department of Energy – which has an intelligence wing – had changed its assessment from natural origin to lab leak.

Weeks later, Congress unanimously passed a bill requiring the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to declassify “any and all information” relating to potential links between the Wuhan lab and COVID-19 origins within 90 days. President Joe Biden signed the bill into law on March 20, giving the intelligence community a deadline of June 18.

Intelligence report

In May 2021, the Wall Street Journal reported that according to a previously undisclosed intelligence report, three unnamed scientists working at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been hospitalized with symptoms consistent with COVID-19 or seasonal illness in November 2019. Part of Congress’ 90-day mandate for ODNI was to provide information on their names and roles at the lab.

A June 13 report on the Substack “Public,” which was independently confirmed by the Wall Street Journal a week later, identified one of those scientists as Ben Hu, “who had done extensive laboratory research on how coronaviruses infect humans” – including on U.S.-funded projects. Lab leak proponents pointed to that as a smoking gun. 

The June 23 intelligence summary dismisses that, however. It says that four agencies see a natural origin as more likely, with two favoring a lab leak, and two undecided. All agencies assess that both hypotheses remain plausible. The report does not identify any of the three researchers, or their roles, but says that their hospitalizations do not support or refute the lab leak theory, because their symptoms could have been caused by a range of illnesses and there are “no indications” that they were hospitalized because of the coronavirus-like symptoms.

Mr. Hu, in an email to Science magazine, denied that he was ill in late 2019. 

The intelligence summary also noted that a 2021 report from the World Health Organization said that Wuhan lab employee samples all tested negative for antibodies that would show they had had COVID-19.

It did not mention that the WHO report was conducted jointly by China, and that the only American allowed to participate in that effort was funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars in U.S. grant money to the Wuhan lab for research on the potential of bat coronaviruses to jump to humans.

“I don’t think [the new intelligence report] advances our understanding one way or another,” says Professor Gostin, who concludes that the intelligence agencies have done what they can. “I would love to see China have a change of heart and allow an independent international investigation, even if it’s late in the day. But that’s unlikely.”