White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Monday warned Americans against jumping to conclusions about the recently revived theory that the COVID-19 pandemic began from a lab leak in Wuhan, China, despite new evidence supporting the said theory. The White House has instead urged people to wait for official reports from the World Health Organization (WHO).
"What we can't do, and what I would caution anyone doing, is leaping ahead of an actual international process," Psaki said on Monday, as reported by Breitbart. "We don't have enough data and information to jump to a conclusion at this point in time."
When asked about the bombshell report that the Wall Street Journal published over the weekend revealing how several Wuhan researchers got sick with COVID-19 like illnesses in November 2019, Psaki said that the Biden administration has repeatedly urged WHO to launch an independent investigation into the true origins of COVID-19 that is "free from interference or politicization." She also declined to comment if the Biden administration was aware of the intelligence report that WSJ shed light on.
In March, the White House took a different position on WHO's investigation that said the COVID-19 lab leak theories were "extremely unlikely" to be true based on their two-week visit to Wuhan, which former U.S. National Security Council official Jamie Metzl called it a "study tour" and not an actual investigation.
Now, though, Psaki says the Biden administration remains "hopeful" that the WHO would pursue a "transparent independent phase two investigation" into the different possibilities of where the pandemic truly began, including the COVID-19 lab leak theories.
The White House press secretary did not say if President Joe Biden would support an American-led investigation, saying that it remains China's responsibility to provide data to be analyzed to draw a conclusion on COVID-19's true origins. Psaki said, "We need access to the underlying data and information in order to have that investigation."
Meanwhile, Metzl is urging the Biden administration to take a more proactive approach in determining whether the COVID-19 lab leak theories are true. In a conversation with CNBC on Monday, the Atlantic Council senior fellow said that it is "critically important" to determine the true origins of the virus because not doing so places everyone "unnecessarily at risk."
"Right now, the World Health Assembly is meeting, and the United States should be doing everything possible with our allies to demand a comprehensive investigation into Covid origins with full access to all the records, samples, and personnel in China and beyond," Metzl argued. "If China wants to thumb its nose at the rest of the world, in spite of more than three million people dead, let them make that statement."
In 2020, Metzl organized a group of scientists and academics from around the world to campaign for a more in-depth investigation into the origins of COVID-19. Just last month, Metzl and several other credible scientists, social scientists, and science communicators came together once more to release an open letter outlining several "concerns regarding the joint study process and report conclusions" on the WHO's investigation. In it, they outlined several contradictory statements and incorrect details. It is unclear if WHO had taken their findings into consideration.
