March 10 (UPI) — The House voted unanimously Friday in favor of a bill calling for the declassification of intelligence related to the origins of COVID-19 and how it might relate to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The bill was sent to the president for him to sign. The White House has not said if he will.
The COVID-19 Origins Act of 2023, which passed the Senate unanimously on March 2, calls on the Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, to “declassify any and all information relating to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and origin of the Coronavirus Disease 2019.”
In February, the Wall Street Journal reported the Office of the Director of National Intelligence had shared an assessment with the White House indicating the Energy Department had judged that COVID-19 probably came from a lab incident in Wuhan.
Shortly afterwards, FBI Director Christopher Wray told Fox News that the virus was likely to have originated from a lab.
“The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” Wray said.
“Here you are taking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab,” he added.
The Chinese government rejected Wray’s comments, with Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning calling them “political manipulation of the origins-tracing issue.”
The bill includes specific queries about researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who reportedly fell ill a the end of 2019, calling on Haines to declassify information about the researchers names, their symptoms, the date they fell ill, their role in the Wuhan Institute of Virology and water they were involved with coronavirus research there.
Now that the bill has passed the House and Senate President Joe Biden will have to sign it in order for it to become law.