WASHINGTON (TND) — In 2020, as a mystery virus spread like wildfire throughout the globe, Doctor Francis Collins was in charge at the National Institutes of Health, issuing calls for action and helping to facilitate the public response.

During a hearing on September 9, 2020, Dr. Collins took questions from lawmakers and laid out concerns.

There is this issue about children getting infected and then infecting others around them that may have an immune system that can’t handle it and that’s one of the reasons we are so concerned," he said.

Now, a just-released e-mail from the Select Committee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, reveals part of his response included calls for a "quick and devastating takedown" of a policy known as the Great Barrington Declaration, which outlined "grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts" of Covid Lockdown policies, especially on children.

Additionally, GOP lawmakers revealed that in closed-door testimony, Dr. Collins also now conceded the lab leak hypothesis, that the virus may have started in a lab in Wuhan, China, "is not a conspiracy theory" though, in the height of the pandemic, it was deemed as such.

At the time, an opposing theory was more widely accepted, as laid out by Dr. Anthony Fauci, Former Director of NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, during a November 2021 hearing on Capitol Hill.

It’s much more likely this was a natural occurrence," Fauci stated.

Over time, Dr. Fauci became a top target for Republicans, who argued his decisions cost lives, and his statements on the origins of the virus meant those who disagreed were punished.

In an interview with The National Desk recently, Sen. Rand Paul, R- Ky., said, "In public, in 2020, he commissioned article after article. He tried to downplay any idea that this could be coming from the lab. He convinced people like Twitter and Facebook to downgrade these stories. “

Senator Paul is now calling for more action, in a Jan. 14 interview on the CATS Roundtable with John Catsimatidis.

In public he still denies it. He still denies that there was any U.S. funding of the U.S. lab in Wuhan. He hasn’t been honest. For his dishonesty, frankly, he should go to prison," Paul said.

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Democrats in Congress continue to defend Fauci, praising his work as a public servant. They accuse Republicans of politicizing the pandemic, promoting vaccine hesitancy and spreading misinformation.

During a July 27 hearing, Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., said "There is a complete dismantling of the importance of what vaccines have actually done in this country and how many lives have actually been saved. The track record on the House Republican side as it relates to this issue and the pandemic has been quite shameful."

As a new wave of COVID-19 spreads across the country once again, issues surrounding how it all began, and how those in charge responded, remain under the microscope on Capitol Hill.