The White House said it plans to look at data from a new World Health Organization report contending that COVID-19 likely did not originate from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
“We want to take a look at the data ourselves,” press secretary Jen Psaki said on Tuesday, noting that the United States was not involved in the “planning and implementation” of the organization’s investigation into the source of the coronavirus.
“It’s imperative that we have our own team of experts on the ground in our embassy in Beijing and otherwise to make sure we have eyes and ears on the ground,” she added.
The WHO on Tuesday called a lab leak “extremely unlikely,” dismissing speculation that the virus could have come from inside the laboratories at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Former President Donald Trump spent most of last year slamming China for allowing the virus to go global, dubbing the coronavirus the “China virus” at political rallies and events, as well as in the White House briefing room, Oval Office, and Rose Garden. Democrats called his rhetoric racist.
Dr. Peter Ben Embarek, a Danish food scientist leading the international group, said he would not recommend further investigation into the lab theory following a 12-day investigation.
Still, the heads of the international and Chinese delegations said at the news conference in Wuhan that they could not conclude whether the virus was first transmitted to humans by an animal or through a host.
The outbreak is thought to have first emerged at a seafood market in the city in late 2019.
The report comes more than one year after the first COVID-19 case was discovered in the U.S., shuttering businesses and schools across the country.
President Biden pledged to reopen most K-12 schools quickly, working with educators to resume in-person learning by the end of his first 100 days in office.
Psaki said on Tuesday that the White House expects to have more than 50% of schools open for some classes by the end of April.
“That means some teaching in classrooms, so at least one day a week, teaching at least one day a week, in the majority of schools by Day 100,” she said.
The U.S. has identified more than 27 million cases and nearly 470,000 deaths from the coronavirus, according to the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus tracker.
