MOSCOW, February 14. /TASS/. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives has launched a probe into the origins of the coronavirus by requesting information from Biden administration officials, the Associated Press reported on Monday.

According to the AP, the subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic at the House Oversight Committee requested information from several people, including Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s former chief medical adviser. The hypothesis that the virus leaked from a Chinese lab is currently being investigated.

"This investigation must begin with where and how this virus came about so that we can attempt to predict, prepare or prevent it from happening again," the AP quoted Republican Brad Wenstrup, who chairs the virus subcommittee, as saying in a statement.

The March 2021 joint report published by the WHO and China following an international mission to Wuhan noted that the most likely scenario of the emergence of COVID-19 is the transmission of the disease from bats to another animal which subsequently infected humans. However, the specialists did not reach a conclusion as to how the virus appeared at the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan. There were also assumptions of its laboratory origin.