US investigation of Covid-19 origins fails to reach conclusive assessment
- Analysts determining Covid-19’s origins remain divided on whether the virus came from a lab leak or jumped from animal reservoir to humans naturally
- President Biden issues a statement after the unclassified report is released that he will press China for more data on the early Covid-19 cases
While dismissing the possibility that Sars-CoV-2 was developed as a biological weapon, intelligence community (IC) analysts trying to determine Covid-19’s origins remained divided about whether the virus came from a lab leak or jumped from an animal reservoir to humans naturally.
Four IC “elements” leaned towards animal-to-human, also known as zoonotic, transmission as most likely, with “low confidence” in that assessment.
One element determined that “the first human infection … most likely was the result of a laboratory-associated incident, probably involving experimentation, animal handling, or sampling by the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)”. That assessment was made “with moderate confidence”.
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Analysts at three IC elements “remain unable to coalesce around either explanation without additional information, with some analysts favouring natural origin, others a laboratory origin, and some seeing the hypotheses as equally likely”, according to the summary.