>“After this statement was drafted, I took calls this week expressing deep concerns from counterparts at DNI and HHS,” [Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun

>“After this statement was drafted, I took calls this week expressing deep concerns from counterparts at DNI and HHS,” [Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun] wrote. “The concerns I heard were that early drafts miscast this as if it were an intelligence assessment, called out actions that we ourselves are doing, and demanded access that we ourselves would never provide,” Biegun continued. >HHS oversees the National Institutes of Health. NIH supported work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that discovered new coronaviruses and that enhanced their pathogenicity in the lab, according to federal records and grant reports. NIH did not properly regulate the experiments it funded at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, according to two independent watchdogs. The high risk virology research there received improper exemptions from rigorous oversight by NIH, they say.