The report is based on a wealth of evidence that had remained undisclosed or overlooked by the U.S. government. Senator Rubio himself described it as a “groundbreaking look at what was happening in China during the years and months leading up to the known outbreak of the pandemic.”
“After years of censorship, there is growing evidence that some type of lab accident is responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic. This report, which took two years to compile, edit, and refine, is a groundbreaking look at what was happening in China during the years and months leading up to the known outbreak of the pandemic,” Rubio said in a statement. “I am grateful to the staff, fellows, and outside experts who worked to connect the dots. Their work helps fill in some critical blanks and has already contributed to other reports, hearings, and investigations. The implications are impossible to ignore: Beijing hid the truth. This report reinforces the need to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable.”
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The report explains how Chinese scientists have been studying coronaviruses since 2004 at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). China opened its first Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) lab at the WIV in 2017 or early 2018. In March 2018, the WIV and the EcoHealth Alliance requested DARPA funding to create a coronavirus clone but was declined. The Chinese government, however, approved state funding for unspecified coronavirus research at the WIV that year.
In 2019, a series of events occurred at the WIV and the lab indicated it wanted upgrades to various systems to address “shortcomings” in the facility. By September, the WIV shut down its online virus database and advised the Wuhan airport of a coronavirus outbreak drill. Days later, a Wuhan resident possibly died from COVID-19. China reviewed a biosecurity law, acknowledging lab leak risks. CCP officials published a report on virus uncontrollability, and a high-ranking official visited the WIV. As early as November 2019, several COVID cases were identified by the Chinese government, but they kept it secret. By then, they were already trying to develop their own vaccine, well before they finally alerted the World Health Organization on Dec. 31, 2019, about the existence of the virus.
CCP officials at the WIV released a report containing frightening yet accurate depictions of the virus. “Once you have opened the store's test tubes, it is just as if having opened Pandora’s Box. These viruses come without a shadow and leave without a trace,” the report said.
By January 2020, Chinese scientists doubted the wet market as the virus origin, but China continued to deny the lab leak theory, despite all the evidence the WIV was aware of and desperately tried to fix biosecurity flaws in their facility — flaws that would have allowed a pathogen to escape from the lab.
The evidence all points to the lab leak theory being the most plausible explanation for the origins of COVID-19.
You can read the report’s executive summary or watch a short documentary on the report below: