Republican-controlled committee says coronavirus likely emerged from a ‘laboratory or research-related accident’.
A committee of the United States Congress has backed the theory that a lab leak caused the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a report released on Monday, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis said it had concluded that the coronavirus “likely emerged because of a laboratory or research related accident”.
Republicans have accused Fauci, who retired in December 2022 after 54 years at the NIH, of being responsible for causing the worst pandemic in a century by approving funding for Chinese scientists they believe manufactured SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
The 83-year-old immunologist, who now lives with security protection due to death threats against his family, told the panel at a public hearing in June that it would have been “molecularly impossible” for the bat viruses studied at the Wuhan lab to turn into the virus that caused the pandemic.
Fauci, who regularly clashed with US President-elect Donald Trump during his first term, has also faced accusations of suppressing the theory that COVID-19 originated from a lab leak in China.
“I’ve also been very, very clear, and said multiple times, that I don’t think the concept of there being a lab [leak] is inherently a conspiracy theory,” Fauci said.
“What is conspiracy is the kind of distortions of that particular subject, like, it was a lab leak and I was parachuted into the CIA like Jason Bourne and told the CIA that they should really not be talking about a lab leak,” he said.
