Dan Bongino, the deputy director of the FBI, said on social media Wednesday his department is actively investigating the origin of the COVID-19 virus.
“As we read and process reports of a new COVID strain emerging, I want you to know that we are actively investigating, in multiple field offices, the cover-up of the origin of the COVID virus, along with associated matters requiring our attention,” Bongino wrote.
A new variant has begun to circulate in some parts of the world. The World Health Organization said Wednesday the rise in cases is primarily in the eastern Mediterranean, Southeast Asia, and western Pacific regions.
Airport screening in the United States has detected the new variant in travelers arriving from those regions to destinations in California, Washington state, Virginia, and New York.
The new variant, increasing globally, had by mid-May reached nearly 11% of sequenced samples reported. The WHO has designated it a “variant under monitoring” and considers the public health risk low at the global level with current vaccines expected to remain effective.
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump ordered new limitations on a form of biological research his administration said caused the COVID-19 pandemic through a lab leak in China.
The United States will halt funding in certain countries for so-called “gain-of-function” experiments — aimed at enhancing the properties of pathogens — according to an executive order Trump signed at the White House.
“There’s no laboratory that’s immune from leaks — and this is going to prevent inadvertent leaks from happening in the future and endangering humanity,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said when the executive order was signed.
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