Collins does not appear to have any strong views regarding China or the U.S.-China relationship. However, he has affirmed the importance of working with international bodies, such as the World Health Organization, to resolve global health issues that cross national borders: “Given the WHO is a major player in that global health arena, we’d hope to be able to continue to work with them in some productive way…obviously, as the organization is supposed to be watching over public health for the whole world, it would be odd if we didn’t work with them on shared areas of interest.”

Collins gradually made more official public commentary on his thoughts regarding the origins of Covid-19 despite the topic being repeatedly brought to his attention. Most notably, as recently as May 21, 2021, and previously on March 18, 2021, members of U.S. Congress have sent Collins a letter requesting for a “complete, independent scientific investigation into the origins of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.” In one of Collins’ first comments on the subject during an interview with FoxNews in mid-May 2021, Collins stated: 

The idea of some kind of lab accident has been out there and I would not say that the investigation that was done by [the] WHO earlier this year satisfied anybody as far as really looking into the details of that…We don’t know the answer yet, and we need to know.

The comment was made among a resurgence of interest in the origins of the coronavirus as lawmakers battled with Dr. Anthony Fauci over potential NIH funding for “gain of function” research at the lab in Wuhan where the coronavirus originated. In response to these discussions, Collins expressed his disappointment for the “misinformation” spread on FoxNews and defended recent statements by Fauci:

Let me be very clear, we never approved any grant that would have supported gain of function research on dangerous coronaviruses to see if they could be more transmissible or lethal for individuals in the human species…we never approved that kind of research.

Simultaneously, as announced in an official NIH statement on May 19, 2021, Collins “strongly supports the need for further investigation” by the WHO into the origins of the coronavirus. As in with other interviews, he reiterated this belief in an interview with PBS on June 3, 2021, among an explanation for the subcontract to the Wuhan laboratory.

…it would have been irresponsible for us not to see what we could learn about coronaviruses in China, given the origin of SARS 20 years ago and MERS another decade after that, both of which came from bats in caves in China…

Also, in a June 2021 exploration of the ‘lab leak’ theory, The Washington Post reported Collins making the following comment:

I am not at all convinced that a natural origin is the only explanation; I’ve never been convinced…And I do think we should be calling on China to make an expert-driven transparent investigation possible, because there are way too many unanswered questions.

In an interview with Fox News on July 19, 2021, Collins reconfirmed his current views on the origins of the coronavirus and called for cooperation from China: 

I do not believe this virus was human engineered, but I can’t exclude that there was in fact a laboratory that was studying a naturally occurring virus and perhaps a laboratory investigator got infected accidently and then it spread out… that would be a lab leak

It’s not a human-engendered virus but it still could be a way that it got started…We need to know that and, at the moment, we don’t have sufficient evidence about lab records or what happened in those early cases.

When asked about China’s statements on the origins of the virus, Collins said he does not know how to support “something that seems so fanciful” and lacks factual support, and called for a “more vigorous, expert-driven investigation” with more cooperation from China.

He has consistently reiterated these views, such as in an interview with The Washington Post in which he said “those virus genomes were as far away from SARS-CoV-2 as a cow is from a human” and in a Lex Friedman Podcast in November 2021 where he reiterated that it’s “unlikely” that Covid-19 originated in and escaped from a lab, but further investigation is still needed. In an August 23, 2021 interview with CNBC he also expressed disappointment over Beijing’s lack of cooperation with the WHO investigation:

I think China basically refused to consider another WHO investigation and just said ‘nope not interested’.

Wouldn’t it be good if they’d actually open up their lab books and let us know what they were actually doing there and find out more about those cases of people who got sick in November of 2019 about which we really don’t know enough…

At the end of the day, he appears to value finding the truth; a believe he strongly shared in a November 2021 interview with NPR where he expressed great distress over how “conspiracies are winning” and the “truth is losing.” On December 19, 2021, his last day in office, Collins appeared on various news shows including Fox News to share final words as Director of the NIH, calling out China specifically:

I’m really sorry that the lab leak has become such a distraction for so many people because frankly, we still don’t know.

There is no evidence really to say. Most of the scientific community, myself included, think that is a possibility, but far more likely, this was a natural way in which a virus left a bat, maybe traveled through some other species and got to humans.

We won’t know unless China decides to open up on this which they have not done, and shame on them for that.