House GOP probe finds evidence of COVID-19 lab leak

Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee said the evidence paints a clear picture of how the COVID-19 pandemic began. The ranking Republican on the panel, Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, released a third installment of an investigation into the origins of the virus on Sunday.

What did they find? The release declared that the “preponderance of the evidence proves the virus did leak from the [Wuhan Institute of Virology] and that it did so sometime before September 12, 2019.” It highlighted the gain-of-function research conducted at the lab, which genetically alters organisms. McCaul said scientists collected samples from caves. The committee’s Republican staff assembled the report. A report that President Joe Biden requested from U.S. intelligence agencies about the source of the virus is due near the end of this month.

Dig deeper: Listen to Sarah Schweinsberg’s report on coronavirus origin theories on The World and Everything in It podcast.