Seven Americans may have contracted COVID-19 in Wuhan in October 2019, several months before the reported start of the pandemic, according to a bombshell military report obtained by the Washington Free Beacon that the Biden administration concealed from the public.
The December 2022 report, which the Biden administration was required by law to release to the public over two years ago but didn’t, reveals for the first time that seven U.S. military service members contracted COVID-19-like symptoms during or after their participation in the World Military Games in Wuhan in October 2019—contradicting the Biden administration’s public claims in 2021 that there was no evidence that any American participants contracted the virus at those games. The revelation adds to a mounting body of evidence that the virus was circulating in Wuhan for months before China disclosed it to the world in December 2019 and further bolsters the growing consensus that it could have leaked into the human population from a Chinese lab.
The 2022 National Defense Authorization Act required the Biden administration to make its report on the 2019 Wuhan World Military Games “publicly available on an internet website in a searchable format” by the summer of 2022. Though the Biden administration transmitted copies of the two-page report to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees in December 2022, it didn’t see the light of day until sometime in late March when the Trump administration quietly uploaded it to a Defense Department website.
The potential COVID-19 illnesses from the American participants in the Wuhan World Military Games appear to have been a closely guarded secret of the Defense Department. Chinese authorities have suggested since as early as February 2020 that America could have unleashed COVID-19 into Wuhan through their participation in the World Military Games. Former Biden Defense Department spokesman John Kirby told the Washington Post in June 2021 that the military had “no knowledge” of any COVID-19 infections among the troops that participated in those games.
The first Trump administration issued similar statements regarding the Wuhan games. In June 2020, the Pentagon told the Prospect that it did not test any of the American troops that participated in the games because they were held “prior to the reported outbreak.”
The games were held within close proximity of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where Chinese scientists, backed by U.S. taxpayer funds, conducted risky gain-of-function research on the same sort of bat coronaviruses that caused the pandemic. That research, which was supported by former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci, “almost certainly caused COVID-19,” Rutgers University professor of chemical biology Richard Ebright told the Free Beacon.
The American military athletes traveled to and from Wuhan via Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, according to the Prospect, which noted that Washington was one of the earliest COVID-19 hotspots in the country.
The report speculated that other respiratory infections could have caused the COVID-like symptoms exhibited by the seven service members and that there was no “statistically significant difference” in COVID-like cases at the military bases those soldiers were stationed at compared to those without them. The seven soldiers all recovered from their symptoms within six days.
The Pentagon did not disclose when it discovered the potential illnesses. The Pentagon declined to comment
Knowledge that U.S. troops may have contracted COVID-19 in Wuhan during the October 2019 games may have been well received by U.S. allies. Military athletes from Germany, France, Italy, and Luxembourg who competed in the October 2019 games also reported coming down with COVID-19-like symptoms during their stay in Wuhan, which they described as a “ghost town,” the Daily Mail reported.
Ebright, one of the most prominent academic proponents of the theory that COVID-19 leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, said he was appalled that the Biden administration concealed crucial information about the first potential American cases of the virus from the public amid the ongoing debate over the pandemic’s origins.
“It is an outrage that the Biden White House and the 118th Congress Senate and House Armed Services Committees did not publicly release this information when it became available in 2022, but, instead, withheld this information for the duration of their terms,” Ebright told the Free Beacon.
“This new information strengthens U.S. and allied intelligence data indicating that COVID-19 was circulating in Wuhan in October-November 2019, U.S. and allied intelligence data indicating that researchers working with genetically enhanced SARS viruses at Wuhan Institute of Virology contracted COVID-19 in October-November 2019, and phylogenomic data indicating that the virus that causes COVID-19 entered humans in July-November 2019.”
Ebright’s sentiment was shared by Sen. Joni Ernst (R., Iowa), who said the report’s findings discredit the theory that COVID-19 originated from a Wuhan wet market in December 2019.
“Taxpayers deserve to know the truth about COVID-19 origins, but the Biden administration concealed this information from the American people for years,” Ernst told the Free Beacon. “This report should have been made public immediately and not restricted to Washington insiders. If Americans visiting Wuhan were potentially infected with the COVID-19 virus in October 2019, those claiming the pandemic began in a wet market just two months later would be completely off base.”
Congressional Republicans have long since concluded that the 2019 Wuhan World Military Games served as “one of the earliest super spreader events” of the pandemic, with House Foreign Affairs Republicans issuing its findings on the matter in August 2021.
The Defense Department uploaded the report sometime in late March to a section of its website dedicated to “quality-of-life” issues for military service members and their families. The Wuhan World Military Games report is sandwiched between two separate reports on military spouses obtaining occupational licenses.
Several federal agencies, including the CIA, FBI, and Energy Department, say the COVID-19 pandemic most likely originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
