Lab leak? Why Congress is split on investigating COVID’s origins.
A year and a half into a worldwide pandemic that is blamed for the deaths of more than 3 million people, a Chinese lab in Wuhan is under growing scrutiny for a possible connection to the outbreak of COVID-19.
Republican members of Congress, who have raised questions since early 2020 about China’s lack of transparency about the virus’s origins, are making a renewed push for bipartisan investigations. But with Democrats controlling both the House and the Senate, any congressional inquiries launched without their support will lack subpoena power and authority to compel witnesses to testify. Without those powers, GOP members of Congress are making little headway.
Just ask Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the lead Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who has been pressing for answers from various agencies.
On March 18, she and two GOP colleagues sent the National Institute of Health (NIH) 29 questions requesting information and related documents about how COVID-19 started and whether U.S. taxpayer funds supported research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Two months later, the NIH responded with a two-page letter, defending its grant process and briefly describing the nature of a 2014 grant to the Wuhan lab. It expressed support for continuing investigation into COVID-19’s origins
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