Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Coronavirus 'Lab Leak' Theory Supported By FBI Director
The Wall Street Journal: FBI Director Says Covid Pandemic Likely Caused By Chinese Lab Leak
FBI Director Christopher Wray said Tuesday that the Covid pandemic was probably the result of a laboratory leak in China, providing the first public confirmation of the bureau’s classified judgment of how the virus that led to the deaths of nearly seven million people worldwide first emerged. “The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” Mr. Wray told Fox News. “Here you are talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab.” (Gordon and Strobel, 2/28)
Axios: China Insists It Has Been "Open And Transparent" On COVID Origins
China's Foreign Ministry claimed on Tuesday that the country has been "open and transparent” about its efforts to trace the origins of COVID-19 and accused the U.S. of politicizing the issue. News reports emerged over the weekend that U.S. Department of Energy concluded in a "low confidence" assessment that the pandemic most likely started from a laboratory leak. (Saric, 2/28)
Politico: GOP Divided On How To Respond To ‘Lab Leak’ Report
Congressional Republicans are anxious to use new Covid-19 lab leak reports to lash out at the ruling Chinese Communist Party and paint President Joe Biden’s administration as soft on Beijing. But they have reached little consensus on how exactly to do that. (Ollstein and Bade, 2/28)
On preventing another pandemic —
The Hill: Birx: US Not Doing Enough To Prevent Another Pandemic Like COVID
Deborah Birx, a physician who served as former President Trump’s coronavirus response coordinator, said on Tuesday that the U.S. isn’t doing enough to prevent another pandemic like COVID-19.“To me, what’s really important as we went through this after SARS, and the World Health Organization’s developed treaties, we spent literally hundreds of millions of dollars on saying we were ready and we would prevent the next pandemic and it happened,” Birx said on “CNN This Morning.” “So let’s be very clear that what we have done today has failed. And I worry that we haven’t put the new things in place that will keep us and protect us from the next pandemic,” she added. (Mueller, 2/28)
Axios: Biotech Startup Focused On Bat Biology Raises $100 Million
Paratus Sciences, a Massachusetts drug discovery startup leveraging bat biology, has raised $100 million in venture capital funding. This has been a winning week for bats, long maligned for spreading disease and general creepiness. First, there was the (still unreleased) Department of Energy report that COVID-19 was more likely to have been caused by a lab leak than by zoonotic spillover. And now this big-money effort to study the flying mammals for the purpose of developing human therapeutics in areas like inflammation. (Primack, 2/28)
Also —
CIDRAP: US Reports New H5N1 Avian Flu Detections In Mammals
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) added 10 more H5N1 avian flu detections in mammals to its running list, which adds reports from four states and includes five different species. Seven of the detections were in Colorado, where the virus was found in three mountain lions, a bobcat, two red fox, and a black bear. Kansas and Oregon both reported detections in striped skunks, and North Carolina reported a detection in a black bear. (Schnirring, 2/28)
