The CIA now declares that the COVVI-19 is “more likely” to come from a laboratory by Reuters


By Erin Banco

NEW YORK (Reuters)-The Central Intelligence Agency said that the COVVI-19 pandemic is “more likely” to come from a laboratory than from nature, a spokesman for the agency said on Saturday.

The agency said for years that it could not determine whether the COVVI-19 was the result of a laboratory incident or if it came from nature. But in the past few weeks of the Biden administration, the former CIA director William Burns asked the CIA analysts and scientists to make a clear decision, stressing the historical importance of the pandemic, according to a high American official.

The CIA claims to have “little confidence” in its evaluation according to which “an origin of the pandemic of COVID-19 linked to research is more likely” and notes in its declaration that the two scenarios-origin in the laboratory and natural origin-remain plausible.

The China Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comments.

It is not known exactly to what extent the agency has collected new information on the origins of COVID-19 and if these new evidence was used to make the latest assessment.

The Chinese government says it supports and participated in research aimed at determining the origin of the COVI-19, and accused Washington of politicizing the issue, in particular due to the efforts made by the US intelligence agencies to investigate.

Beijing said the claims that a laboratory leak has probably caused the pandemic was not credible.

© Reuter. Folder photo: an agent for the prevention of epidemics in protective attire rise to the door of a residential complex while epidemics of disease in Coronavirus (COVVI-19) continue in Beijing, China, November 28, 2022 .

In an interview with Breitbart after his confirmation by the US Senate on Friday, CIA director John Ratcliffe said that one of his first priorities was to bring his agency to carry out a public assessment of the origins of the pandemic.

“It’s a thing of the first day for me,” he said. “As you know, I publicly declared that I think that our intelligence, our science and our common sense all really dictate that the origins of the covid were a flight at the Wuhan Virology Institute.