WASHINGTON — The Senate has passed a bill that would require the Biden administration to pull back the curtain on what was discovered in the U.S’s investigations into the origins of COVID-19.
The week The Wall Street Journal reported that three Chinese scientists at the Wuhan virology lab fell ill with symptoms similar to those of COVID-19 as early as November of 2019.
The push to declassify intelligence behind the origins of the virus has been spearheaded by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN).
“Though many scientists, including former CDC director Robert Redfield, have been outspoken about the possibility that the COVID-19 pandemic began with a lab leak, the media and others have denied that possibility,” Braun said on the Senate floor. “Now that it is clear that the lab leak theory is completely viable, Americans need real answers.”
Braun and Hawley’s bill would require the White House to detail all aspects of any intelligence related to the virus’ origins in an unclassified report. Biden, on Wednesday, asked the U.S. intelligence community to “redouble their efforts” to come to a conclusion on where the virus came from.
A World Health Organization inquiry earlier this year that transmission from an animal to a human was the “most likely” origin, but said a lab leak could not be ruled out.
“It needs to be revealed to anyone that can look at it to make sense out of what has happened,” Braun said. “It was easy for me to get behind something so simple that says nothing more than if we got the information let show it.”
The bill unanimously passed the Senate and is on its way to the House.
