U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) unveiled a landmark report on Monday, providing a new perspective on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 328-page report, titled “A Complex and Grave Situation,” investigates the political chronology of the SARS-COV-2 outbreak and presents a collection of circumstantial evidence pointing to a potential lab accident in Wuhan, China as the source of the pandemic.
“After years of censorship, there is growing evidence that some type of lab accident is responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic,” said Sen. Rubio.
The report, he emphasized, is a “groundbreaking look at what was happening in China during the years and months leading up to the known outbreak of the pandemic.”
The report was assembled over two years and features work from staff, fellows, and outside experts.
Sen. Rubio expressed gratitude to those involved in the project, saying their work “helps fill in some critical blanks and has already contributed to other reports, hearings, and investigations.”
Significantly, the report alleges that the Chinese government hid the truth about the pandemic’s origins.
“The implications are impossible to ignore: Beijing hid the truth,” Rubio asserted. “This report reinforces the need to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable.”
The comprehensive executive summary (below) of the report details a series of significant events and irregularities surrounding the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) during 2019.
According to the report, “a serious biosafety incident occurred at the state-run Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) during the second half of 2019.”
The report scrutinizes the WIV’s research on coronaviruses since 2004, including the establishment of China’s first Biosafety Level 4 lab around 2017 or early 2018.
It also highlights a series of “early warning signs” in 2019, such as costly projects on its Biosafety Level 3 lab and multiple public statements by WIV officials about “current shortcomings and foundational problems in the construction, operation, and maintenance” of the lab complex.
The report suggests a potential government cover-up, referencing an unexpected shutdown of the WIV’s online virus database in September 2019, followed by a drill for a “novel coronavirus” outbreak at the Wuhan airport a few days later.
Moreover, it alleges international deception by the Chinese government.
“Just as Beijing was denying the possibility that COVID-19 came from a lab on the world stage, it was warning its own officials of such risks and rolling out new measures to prevent lab accidents,” the report claims.
Perhaps most intriguingly, the report raises questions about the timing of China’s vaccine development efforts, stating, “Chinese scientists affiliated with the PLA filed a patent for a COVID-19 vaccine on February 24, 2020. Their research methodology indicates they began work on the vaccine no later than November 2019, nearly two months before Beijing disclosed the existence of SARS-CoV-2.”
The report concludes by noting several patents filed by WIV researchers from December 2019 to October 2021 addressing potential issues with the lab’s biocontainment equipment and waste handling process.
“Any one of these problems could have allowed a pathogen to escape the lab complex,” it claims.
While the report’s findings are currently circumstantial, they provide a fresh perspective on the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic and raise further questions about the Chinese government’s transparency during the crisis.
As Sen. Rubio reiterated, “This report reinforces the need to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable.”
The full report answers the following questions:
- “Prior to the pandemic, were biosafety conditions at laboratories studying bat
- coronaviruses in Wuhan subpar and potentially dangerous? If so, were the
- managers of these labs aware of such problems?”
- “Were senior leaders in the ruling CCP and PRC government concerned about
biosecurity and biosafety as general matters, and/or particularly concerned about
the biosafety conditions at laboratories studying bat coronaviruses in Wuhan? - Is there evidence that a laboratory incident occurred in Wuhan concurrent with
the initial outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 in 2019?” - “When did the CCP leadership at the local and central levels first become aware
that there was an outbreak of infectious disease? Did they know it was caused by
a novel pathogen? If so, did they suspect a zoonotic spillover or a laboratory
incident was most likely responsible for that outbreak?”
Read the full report below:
