() – A Republican-led House subcommittee investigating broad aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic and its effects in the US released a final report on Monday summarizing its two-year work, saying it hopes the work “serves as a roadmap for Congress, the Executive Branch and the private sector to prepare and respond to future pandemics.”
In it report In 520 pages, the House select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic concludes that the coronavirus “most likely emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, China,” citing factors such as the biological characteristics of the virus and illnesses among researchers at the Institute of Virology from Wuhan in the fall of 2019.
Most US intelligence agencies say the virus was not genetically engineered, but it is still not entirely clear how the pandemic began. A analysis U.S. intelligence report released last year said a natural or laboratory origin was possible, and the scientific community still divided on the topic. The US Department of Energy declared last year that it had “little confidence” in the lab leak theory. None us federal agency believes that the virus that causes covid-19 was created as a biological weapon.
The subcommittee report states that if there was evidence of the natural origin of the virus, it would have come to light by now.
Scientists have not found any animals infected with the ancient virus that triggered the pandemic, but these types of searches are not an easy task. It took more than a decade to identify the origin of the first SARS outbreak, for example, and the origins of Ebola remain unclear.
However, researchers have continued to accumulate for years solid evidence but circumstantial evidence points to a natural origin of the pandemic, most likely in the Huanan seafood wholesale market, in Wuhan.
In the new report, the subcommittee also criticized the World Health Organization’s efforts in relation to the pandemic, stating that it put the political interests of the Chinese Communist Party ahead of its mission to help people around the world and even allowed the party will control its investigation into the origins of the virus.
Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead for Covid-19 at the WHO, criticized China’s lack of transparency over the pandemic. “The lack of data disclosure is simply inexcusable. The longer it takes us to understand the origins of the pandemic, the more difficult it will be to answer the question and the more insecure the world will be,” he wrote in a editorial last yearand recognized that this lack of information exchange has only fueled the politicization of the virus.
The WHO created a group to draft provisions to strengthen a framework for future pandemics, but the new House subcommittee report expresses concern about the future of the so-called Pandemic Treaty. “Doubts have been raised about the transparency of the negotiations,” he says, and the current draft treaty “does little to address any of the shortcomings revealed in Covid-19.” Any US iteration of the treaty will need to be approved by the Senate, the report states.
The report also criticizes common Covid mitigation measures. Social distancing and masking mandates were not based on sound science, the report says, and “prolonged shutdowns caused immeasurable harm not only to the U.S. economy, but also to the mental and physical health of Americans, with a especially negative effect on younger citizens.”
Experts said those mitigation recommendations were sometimes based on research on other respiratory viruses, due to a lack of knowledge about the coronavirus, and that guidelines may change as scientific knowledge develops.
However, the report applauds the travel restrictions instituted by the Trump administration early in the pandemic, saying they helped save lives and were unfairly criticized as xenophobia.
The Trump administration is also praised for Operation Warp Speed, the effort to rapidly develop a Covid-19 vaccine, which the report calls an “incredible feat of science” that saved millions of lives. The report notes that the operation even received praise from Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a frequent target of the subcommittee.
But the report also says that health authorities and the Biden administration overstated the power of vaccines to prevent transmission or infection, possibly contributing to a lack of public trust in Covid vaccines and vaccines in general.
The report also accuses public health officials of engaging in a “coordinated effort… to ignore natural immunity and suppress dissenting opinions.”
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The research showed that the immune protection After an infection it appears strong, but it wanes over time, and experts say Covid-19 vaccines help fill that immunity gap. Dr. Marty Makary, nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to lead the FDA in his next administration, was a long-time advocate for the importance of natural immunity, arguing in a 2021 op-ed that it is superior to natural immunity. after vaccination.
The report also criticizes health authorities for spreading misinformation, especially about the theory of origin in laboratory leaks and about the off-label use of drugs such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, which according to the Food and Drug Administration from the US are not effective against the coronavirus.
As for specific lessons from the pandemic, the report points to shortcomings in the Strategic National Stockpile and the US supply chain. It recommends that states have their own stockpiles of emergency medical supplies, which can provide a faster response and better suit local needs.
It also encourages increasing domestic manufacturing, especially of medicines. “Many of the medications Americans take are manufactured abroad. But in addition, the active ingredients of these medications, the chemical compounds used to manufacture them, are overwhelmingly manufactured in China. So much so that it has been said that China has ‘global control’ over the chemical components of medicines distributed throughout the country,” the report says.
The subcommittee, chaired by Ohio Republican Representative Brad Wenstrup, a podiatrist, will hold a review session on the report this Wednesday before including it in the congressional record.
The panel’s hearings were often partisan, with lawmakers trading barbs, but Wenstrup and other Republicans insisted that Trump is not part of the equation when crafting their review of the pandemic.
“The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted distrust in leadership. Trust is earned. Accountability, transparency, honesty and integrity will regain this trust. A future pandemic requires an all-America response managed by those with no personal benefit or bias. We can always do better, and for the sake of future generations of Americans, we must. It can be done,” Wenstrup said in a letter to Congress on Monday.
–’s Deidre McPhillips, Brenda Goodman and Amanda Sealy contributed to this report.
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