Overview

• The U.S. House subcommittee's report, based on two years of investigations, posits that SARS-CoV-2 likely originated from a laboratory or research accident in Wuhan, China.
• The findings are supported by over 30 expert interviews and the review of more than one million pages of documents, though no conclusive evidence has been presented.
• Dr. Anthony Fauci, a key figure in the U.S. COVID-19 response, refuted claims during his testimony that the virus could have been genetically engineered, calling such a scenario 'molecularly impossible.'
• The report highlights ongoing disagreements among global scientific and intelligence communities, with many experts still favoring the theory of zoonotic transmission from animals to humans.
• The pandemic, which began in late 2019, has claimed an estimated 20 million lives worldwide, including 1.1 million in the United States, and caused widespread societal and economic disruption.