Washington DC: In a four-page report released on Friday, United States intelligence agencies stated that they have not found direct evidence supporting the theory that the COVID-19 pandemic originated from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The report, issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), acknowledged that the US intelligence community could not definitively rule out the possibility of a laboratory origin for the virus. It emphasized that both natural and lab hypotheses still face challenges and rely on significant assumptions.
While the ODNI report confirmed that the Wuhan Institute had conducted “extensive work” on coronaviruses, the US agencies did not uncover evidence pinpointing the pandemic’s origin.
They stated, “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 origins of the COVID-19 pandemic have remained a subject of intense debate in the United States and other countries since the initial human cases were reported in Wuhan in late 2019. In March, US President Joe Biden signed a bill authorizing the declassification of information related to the pandemic’s origins, expressing the administration’s commitment to transparency.
Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal published a report stating that the US Energy Department, in a classified intelligence assessment, had assessed with “low confidence” that the pandemic was most likely a result of a laboratory leak in China. This report reignited the discussion surrounding the pandemic’s origins, although China promptly denied the allegations.
FBI Director Christopher Wray had also mentioned in February that the agency had long believed the pandemic’s origins were “most likely a potential lab incident” in Wuhan, while China dismissed the claim as lacking credibility.
As of March 20, four US agencies leaned towards the belief that COVID-19 was the result of natural transmission, while two agencies remained undecided.