COVID-19 virus originated in Chinese lab: US Senate report

The latest report released by the US Senate has concluded that the SARS-CoV-2 or the COVID-19 virus originated in a Chinese laboratory but was leaked unintentionally. The 301-page report titled, ‘Muddy Waters- The Origins of COVID-19 Report’, released on 17^th April and has been prepared by a team of a former government health official who played a crucial role in developing COVID-19 vaccines, Dr Robert Kadlec, Dr Bob Foster, and staffers on the US Senate committee on Health, Education, Labour, and Pensions.

The report was released by Senator Roger Marshall, a member of the Senate Health Committee, who chairs the Subcommittee on Primary Health and Retirement Security.

The researchers preparing the report started off with 2 hypotheses, the first being that of a natural origin of the virus, wherein it first developed in animals and then spilled over to humans. And the second one was that the virus got leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

The report suggests that it is believable that the leaking of virus from the laboratory took place due to an unintentional research-related incident that most probably resulted from biosafety containment failures during the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine related research. The team of researchers spent approximately 18 months to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 virus and concluded in the report that the collected evidence supports the theory of a lab leak.

It has been mentioned in the report that there may have been an aerosol leak that caused an infection of lab personnel or that the virus may have been released to the outside environment due to biocontainment failures.

Another theory suggested in the report involves cleaning agents, causing corrosion of welded seams in the lab, as mentioned in multiple 2019 documents on upgrading the lab. The report has also raised concerns for biosafety at the WIV, similar to what has ben done by both domestic and foreign bodies for years now. The lab leak theory has been supported by the fact that an attempt was made by the lab in November 2019 to procure an air incinerator, which suggested a concern about the risk of an infectious aerosol escape.

The report further mentions that in the same month, the WIV staffers had undergone a remedial biosafety training course as well.

‘Muddy Waters’ also concludes that the characteristics of the SARS-CoV-2 virus are such which suggest that the virus is manmade rather than being natural, including the presence of a furin cleavage site at the same location that was proposed in a grant proposal by EcoHealth Alliance, an organization that funnelled taxpayers’ money from the US to scientists in Wuhan.