Joe Biden at the White House in Washington on March 20, 2023. EVAN VUCCI / AP
Joe Biden announced in a press release on Monday, March 20, that he had enacted legislation allowing the declassification of documents on the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic that has emerged in China.
“We need to get to the bottom of the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic to ensure we can better prevent future pandemics,” Trump said. “My government will release and release as much information as possible,” he promised, while safeguarding “national security.”
Initially backed by the Republican opposition, this text was eventually the subject of a massive consensus with Democrats, being unanimously approved by the House of Representatives on March 10 with a Conservative majority. This consensus is all the more remarkable given that the pandemic has created particularly deep partisan divisions in the United States, whether on vaccinations or preventive measures, among others.
Also Read: Covid-19: US Congress Votes to Release Information About Pandemic Origin
The divided scientific community
FBI Director Christopher Wray recently said a laboratory accident in Wuhan, China, was “very likely” to be the cause of the Covid-19 pandemic, shortly after the US Department of Energy made a similar hypothesis. This has prompted the World Health Organization in particular to urge Americans to share their information.
But the scientific community remains divided, between supporters of the intermediate animal transmission hypothesis and those defending the escape from a laboratory in Wuhan thesis.
New genetic data have just revived the hypothesis of a zoonotic origin of the pandemic by documenting the presence of DNA traces from raccoon dogs, civet cats and other mammals at a market in the Chinese city of Wuhan – animals susceptible to it served as preferred intermediate hosts to have the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from bats to humans.
Also read: Origins of Covid-19: Why we must remain cautious