The White House shares report that suggests COVID-19 was artificially created from lab incident and not nature

The Trump administration is again fanning the flames of controversy, with the White House apparently knowing the 'truth' about what caused the COVID-19 pandemic and revealing it to the world while claiming it was cooked up in a lab.

As you might've guessed, the finger is being pointed squarely in China's direction for the deadly outbreak of coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that ground the world to a halt in January 2020.

The World Health Organization has no official stance on what 'caused' COVID-19, but at the time of writing, it has recorded 7,115,974 deaths.

The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, and while many scientists believe it entered the human population through natural zoonosis between animals and humans, others are adamant it was cooked up in a lab.

Even the WHO and its Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO) admit that further research is needed, but according to a specialized COVID.Gov site, the White House has uncovered 'the origin' of the outbreak.

President Donald Trump himself contracted COVID-19, although he infamously said he was immune and had a 'protective glow' after getting it in October 2020.

What does the White House claim caused the origins of COVID-19?

Away from what the WHO has said, the White House has used its report to largely discredit the findings of Dr Anthony Fauci, who served as the USA's chief medical advisor at the start of the pandemic.

In the report, the White House states: "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."

According to the government, COVID-19 was caused by a Wuhan lab incident due to the virus having a feature not found in nature, cases coming from one introduction, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology being China's top SARS lab while conducting supposedly risky low-biosafety work.

Finally, the White House also maintains that evidence of a natural origin is still 'missing', and that WIV researchers fell sick with a COVID-like illness in fall 2019.

Initially shared in 2025, numerous government websites sharing information on COVID-19 were removed and replaced by "LAB LEAK: The True Origins of COVID-19," dedicated to the controversial theory.

Supporters of the 'lab leak' theory suggest that the WHO's own report into COVID-19's origins relies on incomplete data from the Chinese government, while there was also a lack of an infected animal that supposedly kickstarted the pandemic at a Wuhan market.

The White House has taken aim at Fauci as the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director, while also critiquing the WHO, EcoHealth Alliance, the National Institutes of Health, and other federal and state agencies.

Key officials are blamed for obstructing congressional investigations and are accused of failing to offer transparent guidance during the pandemic.

What's going on with Anthony Fauci?

The report has been reshared at a convenient time. It comes as Fauci continues to butt heads with Sen. Rand Paul, and the latter releasing a 1,141-page document including Fauci's diary entries. In these diary entries, Fauci has described investigative journalist Sharri Markson's 2021 book (What Really Happened in Wuhan: A Virus Like No Other, Countless Infections, Millions of Deaths) as a “bunch of nonsense” as she backed up the lab leak theory.

In that same book, Markson said that a Wuhan facility was "immersed in genetically manipulating bat-coronaviruses in perilous experiments."

Fauci has recently invoked the Fifth Amendment at a Republican-led Senate hearing, refusing to answer questions about his oversight of the federal COVID-19 strategy. The 85-year-old has also accused Rand of running an 'unhinged' campaign that lobbies for his imprisonment.

Elsewhere, the White House has been called out for wasting taxpayer money with a continued investigation into COVID-19, also highlighting the likes of this and President Trump's plans to release the government's files on UFOs as a way to 'distract' from the Epstein files.

When the White House shared its origin report on X, numerous replies were asking about the mythical Epstein.gov report, reminders that Trump was president during the pandemic, and there were conspiracy theories abound. It doesn't seem this report is quite the smoking gun the government hoped for.