WASHINGTON — Anthony Fauci, the former top U.S. infectious disease official and a longtime foil for congressional Republicans, on Monday came out forcefully against GOP accusations on a host of Covid-related issues, and said debate about the coronavirus’s origin had been “seriously distorted.”
Fauci, in one of his most closely watched appearances before a congressional committee, said allegations that he sought to influence scientists’ research about Covid’s origins — so that they would not conclude the virus was the result of a lab leak — were “simply preposterous.” But he also played down accusations that work funded by the National Institutes of Health had led to the emergence of the virus.
“One thing I can be sure [about], the viruses that were funded by the NIH bio-genetically could not be the precursor to SARS-CoV-2,” he told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
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