U.S. intelligence agencies not sure about Covid-19 origin
WASHINGTON – A declassified U.S. intelligence report has found no clear evidence linking the origin of the Covid virus to a Chinese laboratory in the city of Wuhan.
However, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) report, released Friday, does not rule out the possibility.
The report mentions that some researchers at the lab fell ill in 2019, before the mass outbreak of Covid-19. The report said the Wuhan lab conducted coronavirus research with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
However, according to the report, there is no indication that the researchers were hospitalized due to Covid. In addition, the intelligence agency could not confirm whether any of the researchers had worked with live viruses before becoming ill.
The report also acknowledges that the Wuhan Institute of Virology has security problems. These may have increased the risk of accidental exposure to the virus.
The Biden administration has stated that it is still seeking important information from China about the origin of Covid-19.
“When President Biden signed the Covid-19 Origin Act, he directed the intelligence community to use every tool at its disposal to investigate the origin of Covid-19,” White House National Security Council spokesperson Adam Hodge said in a statement.
“The release of this report reflects that commitment to declassify and share as much information as possible related to the origins of Covid-19, while protecting sources and methods,” he added.
The report is unlikely to end the debate over the origin of the virus, which has become highly politicized.
The US had issued similar reports previously, and “origins-tracing of Covid-19 is about science and should not be politicized,” said Liu Pengyu, spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington.
“The US should stop rehashing the ‘lab leak’ narrative, stop smearing China and stop politicizing origins-tracing issue,” Liu said in a statement.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has already cleared the Wuhan laboratory of the covid virus outbreak. It said a leak of the virus from the lab was extremely unlikely.
However, some experts have expressed concerns about this possibility.The report’s findings are a reminder that the origins of Covid-19 are still unknown. There are calls for more research to be done to find out how the virus originated.
The report’s release coincided with the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s long-awaited trip to Beijing to restore communications.
According to WHO, there have been 6.9 million Covid deaths worldwide to date. As many as 768 million people have been affected by the virus.
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