United States: Congress votes to declassify information on the origin of Covid-19
The text was passed unanimously. The United States Congress on Friday passed a law that orders American intelligence services to declassify their information on the origin of the pandemic, while the hypothesis of a laboratory leak has returned to the fore.
It was in a rare moment of union that all elected members of the House of Representatives adopted this text. It had already been passed in the Senate with bipartisan support and it is now up to Democratic President Joe Biden to sign it into law. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines will then have 90 days to declassify “any information on the potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origin of the coronavirus “.
A new coronavirus, responsible for Covid-19, appeared more than three years ago in this Chinese province before spreading around the world, where it killed at least seven million people. The scientific and intelligence communities immediately sought to determine its origin, to better prevent and combat a future pandemic.
WHO urges countries to share data
Auditioned this week in Congress, April Haines pointed out that there was a broad consensus that it was “neither a biological weapon nor genetic manipulation”. But the American intelligence community is divided between supporters of “a laboratory leak”, and those of “exposure to a contaminated animal”, she recalled.
The first hypothesis, hotly disputed by the Chinese authorities, has gained credence recently, after being deemed the most probable by the Director of the Federal Police (FBI) Christopher Wray and the US Department of Energy. In the process, the World Health Organization had urged all countries, in particular the United States, to share their information on the origin of Covid.
