Dr Anthony Fauci, the former US infectious disease expert who played a leading role in the country’s COVID-19 pandemic response, appeared before a Senate committee on Wednesday as Republican lawmakers continued their investigation into the origins of the coronavirus. The hearing was initiated after Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky issued a subpoena requiring Fauci to testify regarding allegations that he misled the public about pandemic-related issues.

Ahead of the hearing, Paul released more than 1,000 pages of Fauci’s personal diary entries from the pandemic period. The senator argued that some private notes showed differences between Fauci’s internal discussions and his public statements about the early stages of COVID-19. Fauci and his legal representatives have rejected such claims, describing the accusations as baseless and politically motivated.

The hearing focused largely on whether research supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and conducted in China could have played a role in the emergence of the coronavirus. Republicans have repeatedly questioned whether NIH funding provided to organisations involved in coronavirus studies, including work with a laboratory in Wuhan, was connected to the pandemic’s origins.

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Fauci has consistently maintained that he was open to multiple possibilities regarding how COVID-19 emerged but said scientific evidence has continued to support the theory that the virus likely originated naturally and crossed from animals to humans. Many scientists have backed the natural-origin theory, pointing to the outbreak’s early links to a wildlife market in Wuhan, while noting that no new scientific evidence has confirmed a laboratory leak.

Republican lawmakers have also accused Fauci of misleading Congress over whether US-funded research involved “gain of function” experiments. Fauci has denied these allegations, saying that the type of research supported through NIH grants did not involve enhancing a virus in a way that could have created the COVID-19 virus. He has argued that the experiments conducted with bat coronaviruses were scientifically different from the risky forms of gain-of-function research under debate.

More than 150 infectious disease experts and scientists defended Fauci ahead of the hearing, saying there was no credible evidence linking him to wrongdoing. They criticised what they described as politically driven investigations against the former NIH official, who advised multiple US administrations during health emergencies including HIV, Ebola, and the 2001 anthrax attacks.

The latest Senate hearing comes years after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, but disagreements over its origins remain politically divisive in the United States. The debate continues as authorities review policies surrounding pandemic preparedness, research oversight, and the regulation of high-risk scientific studies.

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