US has ‘no means’ to confirm if Wuhan lab workers got sick prior to COVID outbreak, Psaki says

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday the US has “no means” to confirm that lab workers in Wuhan, China, fell ill shortly before the first reported cases of COVID-19 — while fending off questions about why the US doesn’t do more to probe the pandemic’s origins.

Psaki said “in terms of the report, which is specifically about individuals being hospitalized, we have no means of confirming that or denying that. I mean, it’s not a report from the United States.” Psaki was responding to an article in the Wall Street Journal that said three employees at the Wuhan Institute of Virology fell so ill that they were hospitalized in November 2019. The article cited “a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report.”