The previous, Biden-era webpage included details on COVID-19 vaccines, tests, and treatments.
The Trump administration on Friday changed a White House COVID-19 website to include assertions that the virus’s true origins are likely from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, and it faulted a number of entities and individuals for how they responded during the pandemic.
A White House press officer, Anna Kelly, appeared to confirm the change on social media platform X on Friday, including a link to the covid.gov page that, under the Biden administration, included information on how to order COVID-19 tests, vaccines, and treatment, as well as information on “long COVID,” symptoms, and other details.
Now, the page displays an image of President Donald Trump walking forward ahead of the text “LAB LEAK” and “The true origins of COVID-19.”
Further down the page, the administration criticizes former White House COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci, who left the government in 2022, and other individuals and groups, saying he tried to downplay the theory that the virus was associated with a lab leak in China. It also suggested that a study published in the journal Nature was unfairly used to discredit the theory that the virus leaked from the Wuhan lab.
“Wuhan is home to China’s foremost SARS [severe acute respiratory syndrome] research lab, which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research (gene altering and organism supercharging) at inadequate biosafety levels,” the website states.
Lab researchers in Wuhan, it says, were ill with COVID-19-like symptoms in late 2019, or months before COVID-19 was discovered at a nearby wet market in Wuhan. The lab also had a history of unsafe practices and performing controversial research, the website says.
“By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced. But it hasn’t,” the administration says of COVID-19.
The Trump administration faulted EcoHealth Alliance, which had used taxpayer funding to engage in gain-of-function research in the Wuhan lab, in which researchers genetically alter an organism to enhance its biological functions. The Department of Health and Human Services later barred funding to EcoHealth.
Many of the claims made by the White House on Friday were already released by House Republicans in late 2024. They concluded that the virus originated from a Wuhan laboratory, and they faulted EcoHealth for performing gain-of-function research. The page included a link to the GOP report on the website.
The Epoch Times contacted both EcoHealth and Fauci, who has not released a statement, for comment on Friday.
Previously, EcoHealth denied claims that its funding contributed to gain-of-function research in Wuhan and said that it believes COVID-19 has a natural origin, rather than from a laboratory.
“The bat coronavirus research conducted by EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology could not have started the pandemic,” the company said in a June 2024 statement. Later, it criticized House Republicans’ final report on COVID-19’s origins, describing their claims as politically motivated in nature.
In June 2024, Fauci told a House panel that he did not suppress a theory that the virus emerged from the Chinese lab, saying he never influenced research on its origins.
“I’ve also been very, very clear, and said multiple times, that I don’t think the concept of there being a lab [leak] is inherently a conspiracy theory,” he told the panel. “What is conspiracy is the kind of distortions of that particular subject, like it was a lab leak, and I was parachuted into the CIA like Jason Bourne and told the CIA that they should really not be talking about a lab leak.”
The White House also criticized the World Health Organization (WHO) for what it said was “an abject failure” in responding to COVID-19 because the United Nations-backed health body “caved to pressure from the Chinese Communist Party and placed China’s political interests ahead of its international duties.” Earlier this year, Trump signed an order to remove the United States from WHO and ended discussions with the organization on drafting a pandemic treaty.
In 2021, WHO said that it was “extremely unlikely” that the virus was transmitted from the laboratory to citizens in Wuhan, sparking the pandemic. The U.N. health body released a report a year later signaling that a deeper investigation into the theory is warranted.
WHO’s expert group said in a June 2022 report that “key pieces of data” to explain how the pandemic started were still missing and that the group would “remain open to any and all scientific evidence that becomes available in the future to allow for comprehensive testing of all reasonable hypotheses.”
U.S. intelligence officials released multiple assessments over the years saying that U.S. spy agencies remain divided over how the pandemic began, including about whether it came from a lab or emerged naturally. The CIA on Jan. 26 told media outlets that a recent review on the origins of COVID-19 suggests that the lab leak theory is “more likely than a natural origin,” although it said it has “low confidence” in that assessment.
Practices that became common around the world, including six-foot social distancing, lockdowns, and mask mandates, drew the ire of the Trump administration. It noted that the social distancing measure was “arbitrary” and cited statements from Fauci that the guidance “sort of just appeared.”
“There was no conclusive evidence that masks effectively protected Americans from COVID-19. Public health officials flipped-flopped on the efficacy of masks without providing Americans scientific data—causing a massive uptick in public distrust,” the White House said on the website.
As for lengthy lockdowns that were initiated in 2020, they caused significant harm to the U.S. economy and the health of Americans, namely children, the White House said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.