The White House on Friday updated its website to declare that COVID-19 resulted from a lab leak in China, confirming a theory many had about the origins of the coronavirus.
The website includes a guide detailing how the pandemic truly began, countering the earlier narrative that it emerged from an outdoor market and from people eating bats.
🚨BREAKING: White House officially confirms COVID originated from a LAB LEAK and accuses Fauci, Daszak, EcoHealth, and NIH officials of deliberate cover-up, obstruction, and criminal deception.
— Dr. Simon Goddek (@goddeketal) April 18, 2025
They lied, censored, and ruined lives.
IT'S TIME FOR MASS ARRESTS AND JUSTICE! pic.twitter.com/ezyCgQ7TZX
The White House claims, “’The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2’ publication — which was used repeatedly by public health officials and the media to discredit the lab leak theory — was prompted by Dr. Fauci to push the preferred narrative that COVID-19 originated naturally.”
The page contains various facts about how the coronavirus came to be. “The virus possess a biological characteristic that is not found in nature,” the White House states. “Data shows that all COVID-19 cases stem from a single introduction into humans. This runs contrary to previous pandemics where there were multiple spillover events.”
The White House notes that China’s Wuhan province contains its most prominent SARS research lab, “which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research (gene altering and organism supercharging) at inadequate biosafety levels.”
It further explains that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) “were sick with COVID-like symptoms in the fall of 2019, months before COVID-19 was discovered at the wet market.”
The webpage features a map showing that the WIV is only 7.5 miles away from the Huanan Seafood Market, where the virus was believed to have emerged.
The White House further explains that “A lab-related incident involving gain-of-function research is the most likely … origin of COVID-19. Current government mechanisms for overseeing this dangerous gain-of-function research are incomplete, severely convoluted, and lack global applicability.”
American taxpayer dollars were used to fund the gain-of-function research that produced the coronavirus, the White House claims.
EcoHealth — under the leadership of Dr. Peter Daszak — used U.S. taxpayer dollars to facilitate dangerous gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China. After the Select Subcommittee released evidence of EcoHealth violating the terms of its National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) commenced official debarment proceedings and suspended all funding to EcoHealth.
The Justice Department “has opened an investigation into EcoHealth’s pandemic-era activities,” the White House states.
The Trump administration contends that the Health and Human Services (HHS) Department, under former President Joe Biden, “engaged in a multi-year campaign of delay, confusion, and non-responsiveness in an attempt to obstruct the Select Subcommittee’s investigation and hide evidence that could incriminate or embarrass senior public health officials.”
Dr. Daszak “obstructed the Select Subcommittee’s investigation by providing publicly available information, instructing his staff to reduce the scope and pace of productions, and doctoring documents before releasing them to the public,” the White House claims, also stating that Daszak “provided false statements to Congress.”
The document also takes aim at New York’s Executive Chamber and Fauci senior advisor Dr. David Morens for obstructing investigations into the handling of the pandemic.
The World Health Organization (WHO) “was an abject failure because it caved to pressure from the Chinese Communist Party and placed China’s political interests ahead of its international duties,” according to the administration.
Social distancing “was arbitrary and not based on science,” the document reads. Even further, “There was no conclusive evidence that masks effectively protected Americans from COVID-19” and “Public health officials flipped-flopped on the efficacy of masks without providing Americans scientific data – causing a massive uptick in public distrust.”