The Biden administration covered up a report on the origins of COVID-19 that suggests American soldiers were infected while traveling in China.
Seven U.S. service members who attended the World Military Games in Wuhan experienced COVID-like symptoms, according to the Washington Free Beacon, which was first to report the new information.
The Biden administration was required by law to release the Defense Department report, but it was not publicly available until the Trump administration quietly uploaded it in March.
The American athletes traveled to and from Wuhan through Seattle, Washington, the Prospect reported in 2020. As some may recall, Washington state was one of the first COVID hotspots in the U.S.
Thousands of athletes attended the military games in Wuhan, which ran for two weeks in October 2019 at a stadium close to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, considered one of the prime culprits for the origin of the outbreak.
Athletes from different countries later reported feeling COVID-like symptoms, and they described the city of Wuhan as oddly desolate.
The U.S. performed bat coronavirus research in Wuhan that was funded by Anthony Fauci, who played a leading role in the initial effort to discredit the lab leak theory that has since gained mainstream acceptance. The CIA now considers a lab leak to be more probable than the wet market scenario that was backed by many scientists at the outset of the pandemic.
The Pentagon has long dismissed questions about the military games and their possible role in the pandemic. Biden's Defense spokesperson John Kirby told the Washington Post that the military was not aware of any service members being infected, even though none of the troops were tested.
The Biden administration's newly public three-page report offers the explanation that testing "was not available at this early stage of the pandemic," so it is impossible to say if the infected service members had COVID or other respiratory illnesses.
The soldiers had COVID-like symptoms from October 18, 2019, through January 21, 2020, and their symptoms cleared within six days, the report says.
"Data surveillance reports from military treatment facilities indicate no statistically significant difference in COVID-19-like symptoms cases at installations with participating athletes when compared to installations without them," the report notes.
The Trump administration only briefly looked at the World Military Games in March 2020, the Washington Post previously reported, because of Chinese propaganda in the early stage of the pandemic blaming U.S. athletes for bringing COVID to Wuhan.
But this new information corroborates the theory that China - and later, Biden - covered up clues about the origin, Republicans say.
"Taxpayers deserve to know the truth about COVID-19 origins, but the Biden administration concealed this information from the American people for years," Senator Joni Ernst told the Free Beacon.
"This report should have been made public immediately and not restricted to Washington insiders. If Americans visiting Wuhan were potentially infected with the COVID-19 virus in October 2019, those claiming the pandemic began in a wet market just two months later would be completely off base."
