U.S. intelligence agencies could not find any direct evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic was caused by an incident at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.
However, the four-page report stated that intelligence agencies could not rule out the possibility that the virus originated in a laboratory and had not been able to discover the origins of the pandemic.
The intelligence agencies report stated, “The Central Intelligence Agency and another agency remain unable to determine the precise origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, as both (natural and lab) hypotheses rely on significant assumptions or face challenges with conflicting reporting”.
The agencies stated that while extensive work on coronaviruses had been done at the Wuhan Institute (WIV), no proof of a specific incidence that could have triggered the outbreak had been uncovered.
“We continue to have no indication that the WIV’s pre-pandemic research holdings included SARSCoV-2 or a close progenitor, nor any direct evidence that a specific research-related incident occurred involving WIV personnel before the pandemic that could have caused the COVID pandemic”, the report further reads.
According to the latter posits, the virus escaped from a laboratory where researchers were studying coronaviruses, most likely in Wuhan, China, where the first cases of an unusual, highly transmissible respiratory ailment were discovered in December 2019.
In early 2020, scientists widely disregarded the likelihood of a lab breach, stating that the virus had most likely spread from animal to human.
For more than three years, researchers have focused on two competing explanations concerning the virus’s origin: spontaneous spread from infected animals to humans, and the lab leak theory.
President Biden directed U.S. intelligence agencies to investigate the virus’s origins in May 2021, based in part on their own classified sources of information, including information regarding the Chinese government’s response to the outbreak.
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