US Senate unanimously clears bill to declassify all information on Covid-19 origin

Washington: The US Senate has voted unanimously to clear a bill that calls on the Biden administration to declassify intelligence about the origin of Covid-19, Republican Josh Hawley, the Senator from Missouri, announced on Thursday.

“Tonight, the Senate unanimously passed my bill to declassify all the intelligence the government has on COVID-19 origins. Let the people see the truth!” the senator wrote on Twitter.

Earlier, Republican Congressmen requested documents that may shed some light on the coronavirus origin from the Department of Energy (DoE), the Department of State and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

According to Politico, the request was submitted to the government agencies following a Wall Street Journal article published earlier this week. According to it, the DoE has concluded that the Covid-19 pandemic most likely emerged from a Chinese laboratory leak.

A report published jointly by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and China in 2021 noted that the virus travelled from bats to another animal, subsequently infecting humans. However, it wasn’t clear how the virus reached the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan. A laboratory leak was being cited as a reason, and earlier this week, the FBI said that a Wuhan lab leak was the most plausible reason for the emergence of the Covid-19 virus.

An FBI official on Tuesday confirmed, that the bureau believes Covid-19 “most likely” originated in a “Chinese government-controlled lab”. According to the BBC, it is the first public confirmation of the FBI’s classified judgement of how the pandemic virus emerged.

China, meanwhile hit back at the fresh claims, with spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, Mao Ning, condemning the allegations about the origin of the coronavirus and asserted that they only damage US credibility.

Over the last few years, there has been a divide in the US government over the origins of Covid-19. A 2021 report issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence revealed that the National Intelligence Council, along with four other unidentified agencies, in a low-confidence assessment believed that the initial Covid-19 infection “was most likely caused by natural exposure to an animal infected with it or a close progenitor virus.”

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