House votes unanimously to declassify intelligence on origins of Covid pandemic, sending bill to Biden

The House of Representatives on Friday unanimously voted to declassify information on possible links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Covid-19 pandemic, sending the bill to President Joe Biden.

The Senate also voted unanimously earlier this month to require Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to declassify such information.

Covid first emerged in Wuhan, China, in 2019, though it’s still unknown how the virus spread to people. Scientists have clashed for years over whether Covid came from an infected animal that transmitted the virus to humans, or whether the pathogen escaped from a lab in Wuhan.

The effort by Congress to declassify intelligence on the origins of Covid comes after the Energy Department concluded with “low confidence” that the virus most likely escaped from a lab in Wuhan as the result of an accident.