A federal website that once provided the public with information on COVID-19 testing, vaccines and treatment has been replaced with a webpage declaring the virus originated from a lab in Wuhan, China.
The consensus among scientists is that the scientific evidence points to a natural, zoonotic origin from wild animals and the virus then spilled over into the human population in a wildlife market located in Wuhan.
Ongoing debates about the origins of COVID-19 has prompted investigations by federal agencies, congressional committees and global health organizations. A 2024 report from the Republican-led House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic concluded that a lab leak is the most likely origin of COVID-19.
Covid.gov now redirects to whitehouse.gov/lab-leak-true-origins-of-covid-19. The new webpage, titled “Lab Leak: The True Origins of COVID-19,” echoes many of the same conclusions as the GOP-led House report. The White House website states, “A lab-related incident involving gain-of-function research is the most likely the origin of COVID-19,” which supports a theory that the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID, escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese government lab in Wuhan, China.
The website also details perceived failures of the COVID response including mask mandates, social distancing, lockdowns and infectious disease research funding, and alleges obstruction by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) into Congressional probes into COVID’s origins.
“The Biden administration’s HHS engaged in a multi-year campaign of delay, confusion, and non-responsiveness in an attempt to obstruct the Select Subcommittee’s investigation and hide evidence that could incriminate or embarrass senior public health officials,” the White House website alleges without evidence. “It appears that HHS even intentionally under-resourced its component that responds to legislative oversight requests.”
The website singles out former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s handling of nursing homes as well as Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases during the pandemic, and President Biden’s pardon of Dr. Fauci. The website also criticizes WHO’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic as an “abject failure” because, the website said, the organization “caved to pressure from the Chinese Communist Party.”
“Public health officials often mislead the American people through conflicting messaging, knee-jerk reactions, and a lack of transparency,” the website said. “Most egregiously, the federal government demonized alternative treatments and disfavored narratives, such as the lab leak theory, in a shameful effort to coerce and control the American people’s health decisions.”
Guidance on COVID-19, including information about vaccines, testing and treatment, can still be found at https://www.cdc.gov/covid. An archived version of the older Covid.gov can be found here.
The CIA released a report in January saying that COVID-19 more likely originated from an accidental lab leak in China, rather than occurring naturally, but the agency said it had “low confidence” in its conclusions, The New York Times reported. The CIA’s finding was not the result of any new intelligence and the agency still deems that a natural-origin scenario remains possible.
Five agencies, including the National Intelligence Council and the Defense Intelligence Agency, assessed that natural exposure most likely caused the epidemic, the NYT reported. But they said that they had only low-confidence in their assessment.
The CIA’s report parallels similar conclusions from the F.B.I. and Department of Energy, which also concluded that a lab leak was more likely. But their theories are different, according to the NYT. “The F.B.I. believes the virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The Energy Department put its bet on another lab, the Wuhan Center for Disease Control,” the Times reported.
“There is this public debate, which has largely become really a political debate, rather than a scientific one, about the origins. But the reality is, the evidence base, and we have multiple streams of evidence showing this, all are consistent with origin in the human population occurring through zoonotic spillover at the Huanan [Seafood Wholesale] Market, and not coming from a so-called lab. There is no evidence to support the lab leak theory,” said Angela Rasmussen, Ph.D., a virologist who studies emerging pathogenic viruses at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. Rasmussen has co-authored several articles tracing the COVID-19 virus, including a article published in Science that pinpointed the market as the epicenter.
“This is the White House’s official position; it’s not a scientific one,” Rasmussen said about the White House’s new Lab Leak webpage.
“The lab leak hypothesis remains a topic of debate but lacks substantial scientific evidence,” Pablo Penaloza-MacMaster, an associate professor of microbiology-immunology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, told U.S. News and World Report, which reported on COVID’s origins back in March. “To date, there is no verifiable data supporting the claim that SARS-CoV-2 emerged from a laboratory leak. Historical, genomic and evolutionary studies strongly suggest a natural origin.”
On the new webpage, the White House also criticizes the National Institutes of Health, stating, “NIH’s procedures for funding and overseeing potentially dangerous research are deficient, unreliable, and pose a serious threat to both public health and national security.”
The revamped webpage comes as the Trump administration is making deep cuts to federal health agencies, has halted hundreds of research grants and cut funding for scientific programs.
Rasmussen argues that the allegations made in the Lab Leak webpage line up with the Trump administration’s broader aims around remaking the federal government.
“This document is not intended to be a scientific document; this document is intended to be propaganda that will justify the gutting of the federal government effectively and the dismantling of American public health,” she said.
House Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., who chairs the committee that published the report on COVID’s origins, applauded the Trump administration for launching the new website. “President Trump is rightfully providing the American people with the truth about the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said in a statement.
Scientists concede that they may never definitely know the origins of COVID-19, in part because the Chinese government has been reluctant to share data and cooperate with international investigations.
“To date, the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic has not been identified, despite intensive efforts to do so. This is not unusual — confirming with 100% certainty the origin of a virus is a long and complicated process,” Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D., the former NIH Director, wrote in a statement in 2021. “It took 14 years for scientists to find a single bat population that contained all the necessary genetic components of SARS-CoV, the virus that caused the 2003 SARS epidemic. We still do not know the origins of the 2014 Ebola outbreak.”
“Public health and scientific organizations, including NIH, are intensely interested in getting a definitive answer to inform efforts to prevent future events. This effort would benefit from less speculation and more scientific cooperation, especially from China, without which the SARS-CoV-2 origins will be impossible to identify,” Collins wrote in 2021.
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