Intelligence head: US-funded research may have triggered Covid-19 pandemic

U.S. intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard says her office is working with top health officials to further probe the disputed theory that Covid-19 originated from a lab accident in China.

In an interview on The Megyn Kelly Show, Gabbard revealed that her office is coordinating with Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Jay Bhattacharya to examine evidence surrounding the virus’s origins, Caliber.Az reports.

The group is also reviewing the role of controversial “gain-of-function” research, in which pathogens are modified to study their transmission and lethality.

Gabbard, echoing a view embraced by some Republicans and former Trump administration officials, contended that NIH-funded experiments conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology may have played a role in triggering the pandemic.

"In the case of the Wuhan lab, as well as many other bio labs around the world, [research] was actually U.S.-funded and led to this dangerous kind of research," Gabbard said. “In many examples, this has resulted in either a pandemic or some other major health crisis.”

Her remarks follow the launch of a new administration web page last month, which claims Covid-19 originated in a Chinese lab and accuses former NIH official Dr. Anthony Fauci of helping to conceal the lab’s involvement. The page is part of a broader effort by the current administration to reexamine U.S. support for gain-of-function research.

While intelligence agencies have diverged in their assessments, none have reached a high-confidence conclusion. The CIA said earlier this year that a lab origin was plausible but held "low confidence" in that view. The FBI previously backed the lab-leak theory with “moderate confidence,” while the Department of Energy offered a similar assessment with “low confidence” in 2023.

In contrast, the National Intelligence Council, which advises Gabbard, has favoured the natural origin theory — the idea that the virus jumped from animals to humans, which remains the prevailing view among virologists and public health experts worldwide.

Jay Bhattacharya, the NIH’s new director, has said that strengthening oversight of high-risk research is one of his key goals. Meanwhile, Kennedy Jr. has previously written that U.S.-funded work in Wuhan was responsible for the virus’s escape in his 2023 book, The Wuhan Cover-Up: And the Terrifying Bioweapons Arms Race.

Gabbard said she wants to see gain-of-function research ended altogether.

“To prevent another Covid-like pandemic or another major health incident that could affect us in the world, we have to end this gain-of-function research,” she said.

By Aghakazim Guliyev