Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., this week released a lengthy report on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic that presents "circumstantial evidence" for an accidental lab leak in Wuhan, China, being the cause.
"After years of censorship, there is growing evidence that some type of lab accident is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. This report, which took two years to compile, edit, and refine, is a groundbreaking look at what was happening in China during the years and months leading up to the known outbreak of the pandemic," Rubio said in a statement.
"I am grateful to the staff, fellows, and outside experts who worked to connect the dots. Their work helps fill in some critical blanks and has already contributed to other reports, hearings, and investigations. The implications are impossible to ignore: Beijing hid the truth. This report reinforces the need to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable."
The report, titled "A Complex and Grave Situation," is 328 pages long and available via Rubio's Senate website. It claims that a Chinese government coverup ensued after a biosafety incident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is a part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 2019.
He goes on to accuse the Chinese government of perpetuating an "international deception" by promoting the theory that the virus originated in a Wuhan wet market.
The report's executive summary notes that "from December 2019 to October 2021, WIV researchers filed patents for inventions meant to address problems with the lab's differential air pressure system, biocontainment equipment, and waste handling process. Any one of these problems could have allowed a pathogen to escape the lab complex. WIV researchers confirmed this by explaining that their inventions were designed to prevent precisely such a scenario."