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Comment by U.S. Department of State

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Executive department of the United States federal government responsible for foreign policy.
The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses.
AI Verified (Jan 15, 2021)
Source:
Fact Sheet: Activity at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
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Policy proposals and claims
COVID-19 originated from a lab-related incident rather than natural zoonotic spillover
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AI Verified The quote is directly about illness among researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology before the first identified outbreak case, which is a key piece of evidence in the lab-related origin theory. That makes the author’s stance on the lab-incident-vs-natural-spillover statement clearly inferable as relevant support, even if it is not conclusive proof. · YouCongress gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17 · 2h ago
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AI Verified The fact sheet uses the quote as circumstantial support for a lab-related origin: it says researchers inside the WIV were sick before the first identified outbreak case, which points toward a possible lab incident rather than natural spillover. It is not proof, but it clearly leans "for." ([globalsecurity.org](https://www.globalsecurity.org/security/library/news/2021/01/sec-210115-state02.htm?utm_source=openai)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17 · 2h ago

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AI Verified Verified against the archived State Department fact sheet at the provided URL: the document is dated January 15, 2021 and contains the exact sentence, “The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses.” ([docs.house.gov](https://docs.house.gov/meetings/IF/IF00/20210913/114039/HMKP-117-IF00-20210913-SD119.pdf)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17 · 2h ago
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