The previous, Biden-era webpage included details on COVID-19 vaccines, tests, and treatments.
The Trump administration on Friday changed a White House COVID-19 website to include assertions that the virus’s true origins are likely from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, and it faulted a number of entities and individuals for how they responded during the pandemic.
A White House press officer, Anna Kelly, appeared to confirm the change on social media platform X on Friday, including a link to the covid.gov page that, under the Biden administration, included information on how to order COVID-19 tests, vaccines, and treatment, as well as information on “long COVID,” symptoms, and other details.
— Anna Kelly (@AnnaKelly47) April 18, 2025
Now, the page displays an image of President Donald Trump walking forward ahead of the text “LAB LEAK” and “The true origins of COVID-19.”
Further down the page, the administration criticizes former White House COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci, who left the government in 2022, and other individuals and groups, saying he tried to downplay the theory that the virus was associated with a lab leak in China. It also suggested that a study published in the journal Nature was unfairly used to discredit the theory that the virus leaked from the Wuhan lab.
“Wuhan is home to China’s foremost SARS [severe acute respiratory syndrome] research lab, which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research (gene altering and organism supercharging) at inadequate biosafety levels,” the website states.
Lab researchers in Wuhan, it says, were ill with COVID-19-like symptoms in late 2019, or months before COVID-19 was discovered at a nearby wet market in Wuhan. The lab also had a history of unsafe practices and performing controversial research, the website says.
“By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced. But it hasn’t,” the administration says of COVID-19.
The Trump administration faulted EcoHealth Alliance, which had used taxpayer funding to engage in gain-of-function research in the Wuhan lab, in which researchers genetically alter an organism to enhance its biological functions. The Department of Health and Human Services later barred funding to EcoHealth.
Many of the claims made by the White House on Friday were already released by House Republicans in late 2024. They concluded that the virus originated from a Wuhan laboratory, and they faulted EcoHealth for performing gain-of-function research. The page included a link to the GOP report on the website.
