They may cover up something completely orthogonal to Covid. For example, they may cover up a corruption scheme, to steal money granted for research, or they acted as proxy for Russians, to spy at USA, or they mismanaged facility and leaked virus from the lab in Wuhan second time, AFTER the initial outbreak (1.5-2.5 month of delay between projected start of epidemic in mid-September-mid-October and start of epidemic in Wuhan in December must be explained somehow), etc.