The Biden administration and the DOD concealed a 2022 report noting that seven U.S. service members may have contracted COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in October 2019 — even though the administration was legally obligated to release the report to the public, the Washington Free Beacon reported Tuesday.
Seven U.S. service members may have contracted COVID-19 during the Military World Games in Wuhan, China, in October 2019 — but the Biden administration and U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) concealed a report with that information, even though they were legally obligated to release it to the public, the Washington Free Beacon reported Tuesday.
The three-page report, dated December 2022, states that the seven service members “exhibited COVID-19-like signs and/or symptoms” during or after the military games.
The illnesses occurred months before China or the World Health Organization (WHO) acknowledged the outbreak.
The report, by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, was submitted to the Committees on Armed Services of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
It contradicts the Biden administration’s public claims in 2021 that there was “no evidence that any American participants contracted the virus at those games,” the Free Beacon reported.
According to the Free Beacon, the report “adds to a mounting body of evidence” supporting the “lab-leak theory” of COVID-19’s origins — and that the virus emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The CIA, FBI, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Congress and other intelligence agencies have endorsed this theory.
Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard Ebright, Ph.D., said:
“This new information provides further evidence that COVID already was circulating in Wuhan in October 2019 [and] strengthens U.S. and allied intelligence data indicating that COVID was circulating in Wuhan in October-November 2019, U.S. and allied intelligence data indicating that researchers working with genetically enhanced SARS [severe acute respiratory syndrome] viruses at Wuhan Institute of Virology contracted COVID in October-November 2019, and phylogenomic data indicating that the virus that causes COVID entered humans in July-November 2019.”
In a post on X earlier this week, Mike Benz, a former official with the U.S. Department of State and executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, noted that the Military World Games in Wuhan began on the same day as Event 201 — a tabletop exercise simulating the global outbreak of a coronavirus — was conducted.
News of the report’s existence surfaced the same week that U.S. Right to Know publicized documents showing that, in 2020, a Defense Intelligence Agency analysis concluded that the Wuhan Institute of Virology could develop “a lab-engineered virus” and that it likely “escaped from containment.”
Service members’ illnesses ‘a closely guarded secret’
According to The American Prospect, the U.S. contingent of athletes traveled to the Military World Games through Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, and Washington was one of the earliest U.S. COVID-19 “hotspots.”
A 2021 U.S. House Republican Foreign Affairs report on COVID-19 origins — and a June 2021 Daily Mail story — also suggested athletes from several countries experienced COVID-19-like symptoms during and after the Military World Games, and that Wuhan was a “ghost town” during that period, with residents asked to stay home for an unspecified reason.
The U.S. service members who became sick recovered from their symptoms “within 6 days,” according to the report, adding that they were not tested for COVID-19.
Ebright said a lab leak “most likely” occurred in Wuhan in August or September 2019.
Jeffrey Tucker, president and founder of the Brownstone Institute, said he has “sensed for a long time now” that COVID-19 was already spreading in North America from late 2019. “This new report seems to confirm that.”
“What we still do not know is when precisely the military authorities knew about the lab leak and the spread of a novel virus,” Tucker said. “This report is instructive, but hardly complete.”
Tucker said that in communications he had at the time with attendees at the games in Wuhan, he learned that an unusual illness was spreading at the event.
“From late 2020, I was on the phone with people who were in Wuhan at those Olympics who became ill with something they perceived as extremely strange,” Tucker said. “They were also hushed by their superiors, which they also found to be very odd. Why should getting sick be a national security issue?”
According to the December 2022 report, though, the U.S. did not inform other countries of a possible lab leak or viral spread in Wuhan. “DoD has not engaged in any discussions with allied or partner militaries about illness associated with participation in the 2019 Military World Games,” the report states.
The report also shows that the DOD did not investigate the illnesses. “DoD has not conducted or opened an investigation into connections between the outbreak of COVID-19 and the 2019 Military World Games.”
Instead, according to the Free Beacon, the illnesses “appear to have been a closely guarded secret.”
Under the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, the Biden administration was required to make the report publicly available online by summer 2022. But although the report was shared with the U.S. House and Senate Armed Services Committees late that year, it was withheld from the public until late March 2025, when the Trump administration uploaded it to an obscure section of the DOD’s website.
Ebright called it “an outrage” that the Biden administration and Congress did not publicly release the report — even though the 2021 House Republican report said the 2019 Military World Games were “potentially one of the first ‘super spreader’ events.”
“Taxpayers deserve to know the truth about COVID-19 origins, but the Biden administration concealed this information from the American people for years,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) told Free Beacon.
Ernst said the report adds to evidence against the zoonotic theory of COVID-19’s origins, which holds that the virus crossed over from animals to humans.
“This report should have been made public immediately and not restricted to Washington insiders,” Ernst said. “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.”
Nicholas Wade, former science editor for The New York Times, said the service members’ illnesses are “certainly of interest given the likely escape of a genetically engineered virus from the Wuhan Institute of Virology at around this time.”
But he said the report doesn’t definitively prove an early COVID-19 outbreak.
Wade said:
“The infected people were not tested for COVID-19, as there was no available test at the time, they all quickly recovered, and there seem to have been no known secondary infections.
“There was no difference in COVID-19-like symptoms among bases that sent people to the games and those that didn’t. Hence, it seems unlikely on present evidence that these infections represented an early outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic.”
“© [Article Date] Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
