Security personnel stand guard outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan as members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus make a visit to the institute in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province on February 3, 2021.
Hector Retamal | AFP | Getty Images
WASHINGTON — The U.S. intelligence community said Thursday that it was divided over the exact origin of Covid-19 in China.
“After examining all available intelligence reporting and other information, though, the IC remains divided on the most likely origin of Covid-19. All agencies assess that two hypotheses are plausible: natural exposure to an infected animal and a laboratory-associated incident,” the unclassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said.
One intelligence agency reported moderate confidence that the virus-infected humans after an incident related to a lab. Four agencies said they had low confidence that the virus had a natural emergence, according to the report. It did not name the agencies.
In May, President Joe Biden ordered a closer intelligence review of what he described as two likely scenarios of the origins of the Covid-19.
“Here is their current position: ‘while two elements in the IC leans toward the [human contact] scenario and one leans more toward the [lab leak scenario] – each with low or moderate confidence – the majority of elements do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other,” Biden said at the time.
It’s still unknown if the virus leaked out of a Wuhan lab, NIH director Dr. Francis Collins said Monday in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” adding that the World Health Organization’s investigation into the origin of the coronavirus has gone “backwards.”
“The vast evidence from other perspectives says no, this was a naturally occurring virus,” Collins said. “Not to say that it could not have been under study secretly at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and got out of there, we don’t know about that. But the virus itself does not have the earmarks of having been created intentionally by human work.”
The WHO investigation has been made harder by China’s refusal to participate, says Collins.
“I think China basically refused to consider another WHO investigation and just said ‘nope not interested’,” Collins told CNBC’s Squawk Box.
This story is developing. Please check back for updates.
