A Pentagon report never made public by the Biden administration said that seven U.S. service members came down with COVID-19-type symptoms after the World Military Games held in Wuhan, China, in the fall of 2019, The Washington Free Beacon reported.
The December 2022 report said that the service members exhibited symptoms from October 2019 through January 2020 and that their symptoms resolved within six days. The members were not tested for COVID-19 "given that testing was not available during this early stage of the pandemic."
China has asserted that COVID-19 began in a wet market in Wuhan in December 2019.
The report was unearthed by the Free Beacon after the Trump administration uploaded it to a Defense Department website last month, according to the report. The Pentagon circulated the report to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees in December 2022.
Under the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, the Biden administration was required to make the report "publicly available on an internet website in a searchable format" by the summer of 2022, the Free Beacon reported.
Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, is calling for a new investigation about the origins and timeline of COVID-19, as is Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa.
"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."
Former CDC Director Robert Redfield in President Donald Trump's first term has maintained that SARS-CoV-2 was spreading as early as September 2019 after the pathogen escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
"I don't believe it was leaked intentionally, but I do believe it was leaked from the lab where they were trying to teach this virus to be more infectious for humans," Redfield told Newsmax last month, referring to gain-of-function research.
The World Military Games attracted 9,000 athletes from 100 countries from Oct. 18-27, 2019, in Wuhan as an Olympic-style event for service members.
Competitors from Germany, France, Italy, and Luxembourg also reported coming down with COVID-19-like symptoms during their stay in Wuhan, DailyMail online reported in 2021.
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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