House Worries About Lab Safety After COVID Pandemic

Security personnel keep watch outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology during the visit by the World Health Organization team tasked with investigating the origins of COVID-19, in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, on Feb. 3, 2021. Thomas Peter/Reuters

Over three years after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, biosafety experts told the House what steps might reduce the likelihood of a similar disaster.

“We still do not know how the COVID-19 pandemic started. However, more information has heightened our suspicions that the origin of the pandemic was linked to a lab incident,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, in her opening statement at an April 27 hearing of that committee’s oversight subcommittee.