[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 16 (Wednesday, January 27, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S178-S179]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




SENATE RESOLUTION 18--IN SUPPORT OF AN INTERNATIONAL INVESTIGATION INTO 
  THE HANDLING BY THE GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA OF 
COVID-19 AND THE IMPACT THEREOF ON THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES AND 
                             OTHER NATIONS

  Mr. HAWLEY (for himself, Mr. Tillis, and Mr. Cramer) submitted the 
following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign 
Relations:

                               S. Res. 18

       Whereas the novel coronavirus, hereafter referred to as 
     COVID-19, emerged in the People's Republic of China and began 
     to spread as early as November 2019;
       Whereas, by late December, dozens of citizens of the 
     People's Republic of China had fallen victim to COVID-19;
       Whereas, on December 30, 2019, Wuhan health authorities 
     identified, interrogated, and reprimanded multiple doctors in 
     response to their decisions to warn other Chinese citizens of 
     the danger posed by this new disease;
       Whereas, on January 1, 2020, the Wuhan Public Security 
     Bureau questioned eight Chinese doctors who had posted 
     information on COVID-19 on WeChat;
       Whereas, on January 1, 2020, the Hubei Provincial Health 
     Commission ordered laboratories to stop testing for COVID-19 
     and destroy samples of the same;
       Whereas, on January 2, 2020, the Wuhan Institute of 
     Virology mapped the genome of COVID-19 in order to inform 
     development of public health interventions and medical 
     treatments for COVID-19, but the Government of the People's 
     Republic of China withheld genetic information on COVID-19 
     until January 9;
       Whereas, on January 11, 2020, the Wuhan Health Commission 
     insisted that there were no new cases of infection by COVID-
     19;
       Whereas, on January 13, 2020, the first identified COVID-19 
     case outside of the People's Republic of China was announced 
     in Thailand;
       Whereas, on January 14, 2020, the World Health Organization 
     announced that the Government of the People's Republic of 
     China had seen ``no clear evidence of human-to-human 
     transmission of the novel coronavirus'';
       Whereas, on January 23, 2020, the Government of the 
     People's Republic of China began to implement quarantine 
     measures to stem the spread of COVID-19, at the same time as 
     the disease had already begun to proliferate throughout the 
     world;
       Whereas, on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization 
     declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, with at least 118,000 
     persons infected and at least 4,291 dead in 114 different 
     countries at the time of the announcement;
       Whereas, by January 21, 2021, one year after the first 
     COVID-19 case was confirmed in the United States, COVID-19 
     had infected at least 97,061,592 persons and killed at least 
     2,080,009 in 191 different countries;
       Whereas the Government of the People's Republic of China 
     argues that COVID-19 did not originate in the People's 
     Republic of China;
       Whereas the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's 
     Republic of China has alleged that the United States Army may 
     have delivered COVID-19 to the city of Wuhan and that COVID-
     19 may have originated in Italy or ``separate outbreaks in 
     multiple places in the world'';
       Whereas the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's 
     Republic of China has said, ``China's endeavor to combating 
     [sic] the epidemic has bought time for [international] 
     preparedness.'';
       Whereas a University of Southampton study found that 
     earlier intervention by the Government of the People's 
     Republic of China could have ``significantly'' limited the 
     geographic spread of COVID-19;
       Whereas more than 120 nations have called for an 
     investigation of the origins of COVID-19; and
       Whereas the Government of the People's Republic of China 
     continues to prevent a credible international investigation 
     of the origins of COVID-19, including by restricting access 
     by investigators to certain locations and information in the 
     People's Republic of China: Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved, That the Senate--
       (1) condemns the decision by the Government of the People's 
     Republic of China to hide the emergence and spread of COVID-
     19 within its borders during the initial weeks of the 
     pandemic;
       (2) assesses that the decision by the Government of the 
     People's Republic of China to hide the emergence and spread 
     of COVID-19 during that period almost certainly contributed 
     to the rapid spread of that disease throughout the Indo-
     Pacific, Europe, and the rest of the world;
       (3) finds that the Government of the People's Republic of 
     China should be held accountable for the impact of its 
     decision to hide the emergence and spread of COVID-19 on the 
     lives and livelihoods of the people of the United States and 
     other nations;
       (4) calls for an international investigation led by public 
     health officials from the United States and other affected 
     nations and free from any restrictions by the Government of 
     the People's Republic of China to determine how the handling 
     by the Government of the People's Republic of China of the 
     COVID-19 outbreak prior to March 11, 2020, contributed to the 
     emergence of the COVID-19 global pandemic; and
       (5) calls on the international community--
       (A) to quantify the harm caused by the handling of the 
     Government of the People's Republic of China to the health 
     and economic well-being of the people of the United States 
     and other nations; and
       (B) to design a mechanism for delivering compensation from 
     the Government of the People's Republic of China to all 
     affected nations for the harm caused by its decision to hide 
     the emergence and spread of COVID-19 during the initial weeks 
     of the pandemic.

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