A long-awaited intelligence report on the beginnings of the coronavirus pandemic is inconclusive, with agencies unable to reach a firm consensus as they found …
A long-awaited intelligence report on the beginnings of the coronavirus pandemic is inconclusive, with agencies unable to reach a firm consensus as they found that both a natural origin and a Wuhan lab accident remain plausible. Either way, the intelligence community said, “China’s officials did not have foreknowledge of the virus before the initial outbreak of COVID-19 emerged” in late 2019, according to an unclassified document released Friday. President Biden gave the intelligence community 90 days to investigate the source of the outbreak and report back to him after probes led by the World Health Organization received little cooperation from Beijing. Four entities in the report had “low confidence” the coronavirus was most likely caused by natural exposure to an animal infected with the coronavirus or a virus very similar to it, while one entity had “moderate confidence” that the first human infection resulted from “a laboratory-associated incident, probably involving experimentation, animal handling or sampling by the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
