WASHINGTON - US President Joe Biden signed a bill on Monday requiring the release of intelligence materials on potential links between the outbreak of the COVID- 19 epidemic and a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
Biden said in a statement that we need to get to the bottom of COVID - 19's origins, including potential links to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
My administration will share as much of the information as possible in implementing the legislation, he said.
He said that he shared the goal of the Congress to release as much information as possible about the origin of COVID-19.
After taking office in 2021, Biden said that he had directed the Intelligence Community to use every tool at its disposal to investigate. That work is ongoing, but as much as possible will be released without harm to national security, he said.
The Bill posed political risks for Biden, who is negotiating a difficult relationship with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Beijing rejects the possibility that a leak at the Wuhan lab could have unleashed the global epidemic.
The issue has become a rallying point for Biden's Republican opponents, as much of Congress wants to follow the theory further.
The Bill was sent to Biden by Congress in March.
The COVID 19 outbreak started in the eastern Chinese city of Wuhan in the year 2019 and has caused more than seven million deaths worldwide, according to official counts, more than a million of them in the United States.
Health officials and the US intelligence community are divided over whether it has been spread randomly to humans from an infected animal or leaked during research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The US Energy Department - one of the US agencies investigating the disaster, concluded with low confidence that the virus came from a lab, agreeing with the assessment of the FBI, but contradicting the conclusions of several other agencies.