- The White House completely repurposed the federal covid.gov site that originally provided information about the pandemic and how to order tests. Now it’s a website fully dedicated to President Donald Trump’s theory the COVID-19 pandemic originated from a research lab in Wuhan, China.
It’s been more than five years since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, from which more than 7 million people died worldwide. There have still been thousands of COVID-related deaths in the past month, according to the World Health Organization.
President Donald Trump claims on a reworked federal website the pandemic began from a lab leak in Wuhan, China. The covid.gov and covidtests.gov websites once linked to a portal containing useful information about how to order tests and more about the virus.
Now it’s headlined with the words “Lab Leak” and features a satellite image of Wuhan, the city where COVID began spreading. The website claims to describe the “true origins of COVID-19.”
The White House claims “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” was “used repeatedly by public health officials and the media to discredit the lab leak theory” and was “prompted by Dr. Fauci to push the preferred narrative that COVID-19 originated naturally.”
There are five assertions the White House uses to back up its theory the COVID-19 pandemic started with a lab leak. They claim the following:
- “The virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature.”
- “Data shows that all COVID-19 cases stem from a single introduction into humans. This runs contrary to previous pandemics where there were multiple spillover events.”
- “Wuhan is home to China’s foremost SARS research lab, which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research (gene altering and organism supercharging) at inadequate biosafety levels.”
- “Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) researchers were sick with COVID-like symptoms in the fall of 2019, months before COVID-19 was discovered at the wet market.”
- “By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced. But it hasn’t.”
While there’s yet to be one direct consensus on how the pandemic definitively began, many scientists believe it emerged at a wild-animal market in Wuhan. Countless scientists have studied and attempted to nail down the direct source of the pandemic, and one study published in September 2024 by prominent biologists Michael Worobey and Angela Rasmussen said the pandemic was traced to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.
“This market wasn’t just somewhere the virus eventually got to after spreading widely in Wuhan,” Worobey told NPR. “There’s very clear indications that that’s where the jump successfully took place and human-to-human spread began.”
Meanwhile, another study published by more than 20 scientists in Cell, a peer-reviewed scientific journal, said no epidemic has been caused by the escape of a novel virus, and there is no data to suggest the Wuhan Institute of Virology or any other lab was working on COVID-19.
“No case of laboratory escape has been documented following the sequencing of viral samples,” according to the study. “Despite extensive contact tracing of early cases during the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been no reported cases related to any laboratory staff at the WIV.”
The new covid.gov website claims former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci helped edit and amplify the research paper that supported natural origin theory, which Trump discredits.
Trump’s CIA head John Ratcliffe also recently ordered the release of an assessment supporting the president’s lab leak theory.
“CIA assesses with low confidence that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin based on the available body of reporting,” a CIA spokesperson told CBS. “CIA continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible.”
However, the key phrase is that the CIA still has “low confidence” in the lab leak theory.
The change up of the covid.org website is just the latest in the Trump administration’s moves to alter public information sites about federal agencies and topics.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
