White House pushes for independent investigation on COVID-19 origins
By Morgan Chalfant - 05/24/21 02:08 PM EDT
The White House on Monday said that officials cannot draw a conclusion about the origins of COVID-19 without an independent investigation and more data from China.
“We are and we have repeatedly called for the [World Health Organization] to support an expert-driven evaluation of the pandemic’s origins that is free from interference and politicization,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters at a briefing Monday.
Psaki also insisted that officials would not leap “ahead of an actual international process. We don’t have enough data and information to jump to a conclusion at a point in time.”
Psaki was asked repeatedly about a new Wall Street Journal report that three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were so sick that they sought care in a hospital in November 2019. The report has fueled questions about whether the novel coronavirus may have originated in a lab leak scenario rather than coming from an animal, the latter of which scientists have believed was the most likely scenario.
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https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/555116-white-house-pushes-for-independent-investigation-on-covid-19-origins