Three scientists at the National Center for Medical Intelligence, a branch of the Defense Intelligence Agency, conducted a scientific investigation in the summer of 2021, concluding that COVID-19 was likely manipulated in a biolaboratory. But the information was suppressed by the Pentagon and not included in White House briefings on the virus, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal. 

The origins of SARS-CoV-2 are still hotly contested almost exactly five years after the start of the pandemic that took the lives of 1.2 million Americans and 7 million people worldwide. 

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which just published its 520-page final report after two years of investigation, did not find direct evidence that the virus was genetically altered in a lab as opposed to developing naturally within animals and then transitioning into humans.