WASHINGTON (NewsNation) — A report from U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., claims that a “serious biosafety incident” in China is the likely cause of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The report contends that officials in Beijing ignored safety precautions at the Wuhan Institute of Virology “as early as July 2019,” according to RealClearPolitics.
“Just as Beijing was dismissing the lab leak theory of the origin of COVID-19 in international settings, internally, Beijing was warning its officials that the risk of laboratory-acquired infections with SARS-CoV-2 was significant, and ordering regulatory reforms to be implemented immediately to improve laboratory biosafety conditions,” according to Rubio’s report.
Rubio’s office tells NewsNation that the report paints a picture of the Chinese Communist Party ignoring warning signs as it pushed to make scientific breakthroughs.
While China has consistently called the lab leak theory a lie, Rubio’s report claims, citing an interview with the official state English broadcaster CGTN, that the director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology inaccurately characterized the “lab leak hypothesis as something foreign when, in fact, Chinese citizens were the first to consider the possibility.”
The White House has been outspoken about the lack of transparency, and the World Health Organization (WHO) has called on China to share health data from the early days of the pandemic.
The WHO said they will keep investigating the origin of the pandemic.
“Until we have more evidence, all hypotheses are still on the table,” the organization told NewsNation in a statement.
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