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Top Biden administration officials on Sunday expressed concern about the way a pivotal report examining the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic was crafted, including the possibility that the Chinese government had a hand in writing it.
The Geneva-based World Health Organization has said the findings from its mission to Wuhan, China, in early 2021 will be ready in a few days. The report had been expected earlier in March.
The U.S. has “real concerns about the methodology and the process” of the report, including that the Chinese government “apparently helped to write it,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on CNN.
While there needs to be “accountability for the past,” the focus should be on building a stronger system for the future, Blinken said on “State of the Union.”
Read about the report’s likely conclusions, and Covid’s link to the wildlife trade
Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious diseases specialist, said he didn’t know if the report would be a “whitewash” when asked about it on CBS, and said he wouldn’t pre-judge the conclusions.
“What I would like to do is first see the report,” said Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on “Face the Nation.” “You’re getting a lot of conjecture around about what they did and what they were allowed to do or not.”
“If, in fact, obviously, there was a lot of restrictions on the ability of the people who went there to really take a look, then I’m going to have some considerable concern about that.”
Pressuring China
The Biden administration has maintained pressure on China and the WHO for weeks over what it has portrayed as a flawed investigation.
“We do not believe that China has made available sufficient original data into how this pandemic began to spread both in China and then eventually around the world,” U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Feb. 21.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that the U.S. was concerned about a lack of transparency and data in the preparation of that report.
“We’ll have to take a look at it and make sure we have access to the underlying information,” Psaki said in a press briefing. She reiterated a call for an international investigation into the pandemic and “the lack of transparency from the Chinese.”
China Is Making It Harder to Solve the Mystery of Where Covid Began
Robert Redfield, who led the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the first year of the pandemic, told CNN in a clip that aired Friday that he thinks the coronavirus originated in a Wuhan lab, reiterating a theory embraced by former president Donald Trump.
That scenario is more likely than any alternative, including that the virus erupted after transferring from animals to humans or in a live-animal market, Redfield said.
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