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The House on Friday approved a bill requiring the nation’s intelligence chief to declassify any evidence of a link between a major lab in China and the origins of the coronavirus that sparked the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2019.
The measure, which passed on a unanimous 419-0 vote, calls on Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to declassify and report to Congress within 90 days on possible ties between the virus and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The legislation, authored by Sen. Josh Hawley, Missouri Republican, passed the Senate by unanimous consent this month and will head to President Biden, who hasn’t said whether he will sign it but did not issue a veto threat.
Rep. Michael Turner, Ohio Republican, said Americans deserve answers after the virus killed over 1 million people in the U.S., caused lingering symptoms known as “long COVID” in others and knocked school children out of the classroom for an extended period.
“The intelligence community does have more information about COVID than the public is led to believe,” he said.
Rep. Jim Himes, Connecticut Democrat, supported the bill but warned lawmakers and Americans not to cherry-pick the evidence it wants.
“We need to think about whether we want confirmation bias, our tendency to select just those facts that support our preexisting positions,” he said. “No matter what’s declassified, it won’t be dispositive about the origins of the coronavirus. So this is a really important first step.”
China’s Communist regime has sharply denied the Wuhan lab was responsible for the virus and criticized U.S. and global efforts demanding more information on COVID-19’s origins.
