(NewsNation) — In March, President Joe Biden signed a bill that required the declassification of all federal information related to the origins of the coronavirus and its possible leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

The deadline to declassify the COVID-19 documents is June 18.

Connecticut Democratic Rep. Jim Himes is the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and joined “The Hill on NewsNation” to discuss the origin of the coronavirus.

“The Chinese have not been open and transparent about exactly what happened inside their country,” Himes said. “We know where it originated, but there just hasn’t been the cooperation from the Chinese because clearly they regard this whole matter as something of an embarrassment.”

It’s been approximately three and a half years since the beginning of COVID and more than 1.1 million Americans died. And that number continues to rise.

“It’s hard to figure out exactly how a pandemic started, exactly where,” he said. “This is true of Ebola. It’s true of HIV. It’s particularly hard when the people who are in charge of all of the science, all of the jurisdictions are not being forthcoming.”

Himes said the information in the declassified documents may be “profoundly unsatisfying for people.”

“Until the Chinese are fully transparent,” he said, “we may never know exactly the answer of where COVID came from.”