(NewsNation) — A final congressional report on COVID-19 released Monday has determined the virus likely emerged from a lab accident in China and that the U.S. government perpetrated “misinformation” by incorrectly calling the lab leak theory a “conspiracy.”
The House Oversight and Accountability Committee’s COVID-19 panel, controlled by Republicans, issued its 520-page report two years after its investigation began and ahead of a hearing this week.
The report affirmed what has long been the leading theory, stating that a “lab-related incident” involving gain-of-function research in Wuhan is the most likely origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Researchers had initially suggested that the virus emerged in nature and jumped from animals to people, probably at a wildlife market in Wuhan.
“Four years after the onset of the worst pandemic in 100 years, the weight of the evidence increasingly supports the lab leak hypothesis,” the report stated.
The coronavirus was first identified in Wuhan in December 2019 before spreading worldwide and killing around 7 million people. FBI Director Christopher Wray has previously said the agency assessed that a leak from a lab in Wuhan “most likely caused the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The report cites several reasons to back the conclusion, including that the lab in Wuhan is home to China’s foremost SARS research lab, the lab had a history of conducting gain-of-function research at inadequate biosafety levels and that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) were sick with a COVID-like virus in the fall of 2019, months before it was discovered at the wet market.
The report also further implicates New York nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance of using U.S. taxpayer dollars to facilitate gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab.
Findings also revealed that the government “perpetrated COVID-19 misinformation” when public health officials incorrectly “characterized the Lab-Leak Theory as a ‘Conspiracy Theory.’”
“Unfortunately, kneejerk reactions by the federal government did little to fix the problem and instead may have sowed deeper distrust of government institutions while trampling on the First Amendment of the Constitution,” it stated.
The report specifically calls out Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert until leaving the government in 2022, saying that he pushed back on the lab leak theory and “prompted” a research report called “The Proximal Origin” that was used to discredit it.
“Although Dr. Fauci believed the lab-leak theory to be a conspiracy theory at the start of the pandemic, it now appears that his position is that he does have an open mind about the origin of the virus—so long as it does not implicate EcoHealth Alliance, and by extension himself and NIAID. Understandably, as he signed off on the EcoHealth Alliance grant,” the report stated.
The massive report also examined the effectiveness and consequences of masks and mask mandates and stated that they were ineffective at controlling the spread of COVID-19.
Prolonged lockdowns caused immeasurable harm to not only the American economy but also to the mental and physical health of Americans, with a particularly negative effect on younger citizens.
Read the full report here: