COVID Origin Investigator: We Released Info in January That Wuhan Lab Was Working on 'Closest Known Natural Virus to the COVID-19 Virus'

On Wednesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “OutFront,” former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Feith, who investigated the lab leak theory on the origin of COVID-19, stated that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was “conducting research in the months and years leading up to the outbreak, including on the closest known natural virus to the COVID-19 virus.” And that the State Department put this information out in January of 2021.

Feith began by saying that there were pieces of circumstantial evidence, such as the fact that Wuhan is “not a natural environment where you would expect a bat coronavirus to be found. It’s an urban environment about a thousand miles away from where the bats that are known to contain the closest known viruses to the COVID-19 virus are found.”

He continued that there were other pieces of information, such as researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology falling ill in 2019, and “that they were conducting research in the months and years leading up to the outbreak, including on the closest known natural virus to the COVID-19 virus. And they had not been transparent over the years about what they had been doing and we wanted to call for greater transparency.”

Feith added that in January, the State Department released a fact sheet laying this out.

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