WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans kicked off an investigation Monday into the origins of COVID-19 by issuing a series of letters to current and former Biden administration officials for documents and testimony.

The Republican chairmen of the House Oversight Committee and the subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic requested information from several people, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, surrounding the hypothesis that the coronavirus leaked accidentally from a Chinese lab.

“This investigation must begin with where and how this virus came about so that we can attempt to predict, prepare or prevent it from happening again,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, chair of the virus subcommittee, said in a statement.

Rep. James Comer, R-Tenn., chairman of the oversight committee, added that Republicans will “follow the facts” and “hold U.S. government officials that took part in any sort of cover-up accountable.”

The letters to Fauci, National Intelligence Director Avril Haines, Health Secretary Xavier Beccera and others are the latest effort by the new Republican majority to make good on promises made during the 2022 midterms campaign.

Wenstrup, who is also a longtime member of the House Intelligence Committee, has accused U.S. intelligence of withholding key facts about its investigation into the coronavirus. Republicans on the committee last year issued a staff report arguing that there are “indications” that the virus may have been developed as a bioweapon inside the China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.

That would contradict a U.S. intelligence community assessment released in unclassified form in August 2021 that said analysts do not believe the virus was a bioweapon, though it may have leaked in a lab accident.

The letters sent Monday do not require the cooperation of recipients. But in announcing the Republican staff report in December, Wenstrup said that lawmakers would issue subpoenas if potential witnesses didn’t cooperate.

It is extremely difficult for scientists to establish definitively how diseases emerge, but studies by experts around the world have determined that COVID-19 most likely emerged from a live animal market in Wuhan, China.

Initially dismissed by most public health experts and government officials, the hypothesis that COVID-19 originated from an accidental lab leak began to receive scrutiny after President Joe Biden ordered an investigation into the matter in May 2021.

The 90-day review was meant to push American intelligence agencies to collect more information and review what they already had. Former State Department officials under President Donald Trump had publicly pushed for further investigation into virus origins, as had scientists and the World Health Organization. But the review proved to be inconclusive, with intelligence agencies saying that barring an unforeseen breakthrough, they wouldn’t be able to conclude the origin either way.

Many scientists, including Fauci, who until December served as Biden’s chief medical adviser, say they still believe the virus most likely emerged in nature and jumped from animals to humans, a well-documented phenomenon known as a spillover event. Virus researchers have not publicly identified any key new scientific evidence that might make the lab-leak hypothesis more likely.

But Republicans have accused Fauci of lying to Congress when he denied in May that the National Institutes of Health funded “gain of function” research — the practice of enhancing a virus in a lab to study its potential impact in the real world — at a virology lab in Wuhan. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, even urged Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Fauci’s statements.

Fauci, who served as the country’s top infectious disease expert under both Republican and Democratic presidents, has called the GOP criticism nonsense.

Cruz and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., have previously said that an October 2021 letter from NIH to Congress contradicts Fauci. But no clear evidence or scientific consensus exists that “gain of function” research was funded by NIH, and there is no link between U.S.-funded research to the emergence of COVID-19. NIH has repeatedly maintained that its funding did not go to such research involving boosting the infectivity and lethality of a pathogen.

Nonetheless, Fauci indicated in November that he would “cooperate fully and testify” if Republicans followed through with their plans to investigate COVID’s origin.

“I have no trouble testifying — we can defend and explain everything that we’ve said,” he told reporters during a White House briefing last year.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post GOP launches probe into COVID origins with letter to Fauci appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert who became a household name — and the subject of partisan attacks — during the COVID-19 pandemic, announced Monday he will leave the federal government in December after more than five decades.

Fauci directs the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden and also leads a lab studying the immune system.

While the COVID-19 pandemic introduced him to millions of Americans, he’s given straight-talk to the nation about numerous outbreaks including HIV/AIDS, SARS, pandemic flu, Ebola and the 2001 anthrax attacks.

“I’ve gone into this campus and into the labs and into the hospital every day, including most weekends, for 54 years. The idea of walking away from it obviously is bittersweet,” Fauci told The Associated Press.

In announcing his departure, the 81-year-old Fauci called his roles “the honor of a lifetime” but said it was time “to pursue the next chapter of my career.”

Known for his candor and for the ability to translate complex medical information into everyday language, Fauci has been a key adviser to seven presidents starting with Ronald Reagan.

Fauci became the face of the government response to COVID-19 as it hit in early 2020, with frequent appearances on television news and at daily press conferences with White House officials, including then-President Donald Trump. But as the pandemic deepened, Fauci fell out of favor with Trump when his urgings of continued public caution clashed with the former president’s desire to return to normalcy and to promote unproven treatments for the virus.

Fauci found himself marginalized by the Trump administration, but he continued to speak out publicly in media interviews, advocating social distancing and masks in public settings before the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines.

He was also the subject of political attacks and death threats and was given a security detail for his protection.

When Biden won the White House, he asked Fauci to stay on in his administration in an elevated capacity.

“I’ve been able to call him at any hour of the day for his advice,” Biden said in a statement. “Whether you’ve met him personally or not, he has touched all Americans’ lives with his work. I extend my deepest thanks for his public service. The United States of America is stronger, more resilient, and healthier because of him.”

Fauci said he planned to continue working after leaving the government, saying he wants to use his experience “to hopefully inspire the younger generation of scientists and would-be scientists” to consider a career in public service.

For all the rancor of the coronavirus pandemic, it wasn’t Fauci’s first run-in with an angry public. He became head of the infectious diseases branch of the National Institutes of Health in 1984 when the nation was in the throes of the AIDS crisis. Activists protested what they saw as government indifference and Fauci, frustrated at being unable to save dying patients in the NIH’s hospital, brought them to the table in the hunt for treatments.

Later, under President George W. Bush, Fauci helped develop PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, to bring life-saving HIV treatments to developing countries. In 2008, Bush awarded Fauci the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Fauci said Monday he’d hoped there would be a successful HIV vaccine before he retired but “it wasn’t for lack of trying” to overcome extraordinary scientific challenges posed by that virus.

Fast forward to COVID-19, and for many Americans, Fauci has remained a trusted voice even as scientists were surprised again and again by a fast-evolving new virus. The NIH had laid the scientific groundwork for the speedy development of powerful coronavirus vaccines that, while not perfect, are highly effective at preventing serious illness and death.

Fauci told the AP that he remains frustrated at the country’s divisions over how to handle the pandemic.

“If ever there was a situation where you wanted a unified approach and everybody pulling together for the common good, it would be when you’re in the middle of a public health crisis,” he said. “As a physician and a scientist, I and my colleagues have the responsibility to do what’s correct, what is science-based.”

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post Fauci to step down after decades as top US infection expert appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.