On December 9, 2020, roughly a dozen State Department employees from four different bureaus gathered in a conference room in Foggy Bottom to discuss an upcoming fact-finding mission to Wuhan organized in part by the World Health Organization. The group agreed on the need to press China to allow a thorough, credible, and transparent investigation, with unfettered access to markets, hospitals, and government laboratories. The conversation then turned to the more sensitive question: What should the U.S. government say publicly about the Wuhan Institute of Virology?
The need for a no-holds-barred investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic is more compelling than ever following new revelations about the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Footage from inside the facility, not seen previously and obtained by Sharri Markson, shows live bats being kept in cages. The finding debunks claims by a World Health Organisation investigator, British zoologist Peter Daszak, who said in December last year that the notion the laboratory kept bats was “a widely circulated conspiracy theory”. But Dr Daszak appeared to backtrack on his earlier denials this month when he admitted investigators did not ask the Wuhan Institute of Virology if it had bats. “I wouldn’t be surprised if, like many other virology labs, they were trying to set up a bat colony,” he tweeted on June 1.