'An outrage': Biden admin hid report of US service members getting sick at Wuhan military games in October 2019

Nearly 10,000 athletes from over 109 countries traveled to Wuhan, China, to compete in the 7th Military World Games from October 18 to October 28, 2019.

Participants from various nations, including Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Luxembourg, reported taking ill with COVID-like symptoms at or after the games — a damning coincidence granted the games took place near the suspected origin of the virus, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where dangerous experiments were long performed with poor safety protocols on coronaviruses.

The Biden administration apparently sat on a December 2022 report indicating that some of the 263 members of the U.S. delegation who attended the games may have also caught COVID-19 or something just like it months before the supposed zoonotic leap at a wet market.

By concealing the document, the administration effectively left the public with then-Pentagon spokesman John Kirby's 2021 assertion to the Washington Post that there was no knowledge of American infections at the games and no evidence to indicate U.S. military personnel were infected before travel restrictions were implemented in early 2020.

The 2022 National Defense Authorization Act included a requirement that former President Joe Biden's then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin submit to congressional lawmakers a report on the military games detailing:

• the number of American athletes and staff "who attended the 2019 World Military Games and became ill with COVID-19-like symptoms during or shortly after their return to the United States";
• the results of any blood testing done on American participants;
• the number of home station Pentagon facilities of participating members that experienced outbreaks in early 2020; and
• whether the Pentagon discussed the illnesses surrounding the games with other militaries.

In addition to disclosing such information to the House and Senate armed services committees, the NDAA required that the Biden administration make the report publicly available.

'It is an outrage that the Biden White House and the 118th Congress Senate and House Armed Services Committees did not publicly release this information.'

The Washington Free Beacon reported that the Biden administration refrained from releasing the report to the public, and it wasn't until March 2025 when the Trump administration uploaded it to the Defense Department website that the document became widely accessible.

Contrary to Kirby's suggestion that there was no knowledge or evidence of infection, the Pentagon concluded that of the 263 total American participants in the game — of whom 2019 were military personnel — seven service members "exhibited COVID-19-like signs and/or symptoms during the timeframe of October 18, 2019, through January 21, 2020."

Members of the U.S. delegation to the games were not tested for COVID-19 or antibodies "as testing was not available at this early stage of the pandemic," so there is apparently no definitive proof these were indeed COVID-19 infections.

The report indicated the symptoms could have been caused by other respiratory infections and that all seven infected service members' symptoms resolved within six days.

The report noted further that there was "no statistically significant difference in COVID-19-like symptoms cases at installations with participating athletes when compared to installations without them."

Molecular biologist Dr. Richard H. Ebright of Rutgers University told the Free Beacon, "It is an outrage that the Biden White House and the 118th Congress Senate and House Armed Services Committees did not publicly release this information when it became available in 2022, but, instead, withheld this information for the duration of their terms."

"This new information strengthens U.S. and allied intelligence data indicating that COVID-19 was circulating in Wuhan in October-November 2019, U.S. and allied intelligence data indicating that researchers working with genetically enhanced SARS viruses at Wuhan Institute of Virology contracted COVID-19 in October-November 2019, and phylogenomic data indicating that the virus that causes COVID-19 entered humans in July-November 2019," added Ebright.

Sen. Jodi Ernst (R-Iowa) told the Free Beacon that the report helped put a nail in the coffin of the theory that the virus originated in a Wuhan wet market in December 2019.

"Taxpayers deserve to know the truth about COVID-19 origins, but the Biden administration concealed this information from the American people for years," said Ernst. "This report should have been made public immediately and not restricted to Washington insiders. If Americans visiting Wuhan were potentially infected with the COVID-19 virus in October 2019, those claiming the pandemic began in a wet market just two months later would be completely off base."

Ahead of the games — as early as August 2019 — hospitals in the region were apparently overwhelmed with an unseasonably high number of patients, while regional queries for the terms "diarrhea" and "cough" spiked on China's equivalent of Google.

An American researcher and several European researchers noted their suspicions in a September 2022 study that the Wuhan games "may have contributed to the dissemination of SARS-CoV-2" but indicated that "no official information has been made available despite reports that some foreign participants experienced Covid-19-compatible symptoms that were attributed to influenza or gastroenteritis."

French pentathlete Elodie Clouvel, Luxembourg swimmer Julien Henx, German volleyball player Jacqueline Brock, and Italian fencer Matteo Tagliariol also indicated they and/or members of their team got sick while in Wuhan.

Brock indicated in early 2020 that "after a few days, some athletes from my team got ill, I got sick in the last two days."

"I have never felt so sick," continued Brock. "Either it was a very bad cold or COVID-19."

Tagliariol told Corriere della Sera, "When we arrived in Wuhan, almost all of us got sick. But the worst was returning home. After a week I had a very high fever, I felt like I couldn't breathe."

Canadian military sources told the Financial Post in 2021 that one service member reported feeling "very sick 12 days after we arrived, with fever, chills, vomiting, insomnia."

Scores of Canadian athletes were apparently placed in isolation on their 12-hour flight home at the end of October. The athletes' symptoms included coughing and diarrhea.

The Canadian Department of National Defense told Blaze News last year that "some athletes experienced gastrointestinal symptoms on the flight to Wuhan for the Military World Games and during the return flight home to Canada."

"Their symptoms and illness course of one to three days were consistent with gastrointestinal illness, or a 'stomach flu,' and were managed as such," said a spokeswoman for the National Defense Department.

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