WASHINGTON (NewsNation) — The idea of COVID-19 originating due to a lab leak in China had once been rebuffed as a fringe idea. But the U.S. Department of Energy, which President Joe Biden tasked to lead a government-wide review, is reportedly now giving credence to the possibility.
The White House has not yet confirmed reports that the Department of Energy has concluded COVID-19 most likely originated in China due to a lab leak. The new conclusion is made with what is classified as “low confidence,” in which the evidence is incomplete or questionable.
It’s now the second government agency to reportedly take that stance, as the FBI is said to believe with “moderate confidence” that a lab leak is to blame for the global pandemic.
The lab leak theory was initially shot down in early 2020 by top prominent scientists.
Then-President Donald Trump embraced the theory in 2020 and it became a political dividing line between Democrats and Republicans.
Facebook even tagged the theory as misinformation.
In May of 2021, Biden ordered the intelligence community to take a deeper look at the origins of COVID-19.
Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee put out their own report in August of 2021, concluding “the virus did leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and that it did so sometime before Sept. 12, 2019.
According to Global Biolabs, there are five laboratories in China equipped to handle coronaviruses, and these labs exist worldwide in 38 different countries. There are nearly 70 labs around the world equipped to study the most infectious life-threatening diseases. Roughly 80% of the most sensitive labs are run by either universities or governments.