The CIA believes Covid -19 probably originates from a laboratory, but has low confidence in its finding – Fremont Tribune

The finding is not the result of the new intelligence and the report was completed at the request of the Biden administration and former CIA Director William Burns. He was declassified and released on Saturday at the behest of President Donald Trump’s election to lead the agency John Ratcliffe, who was sworn as a director on Thursday.

The encouraged finding suggests that the agency believes that the set of evidence makes laboratory origin more likely than natural origin. But the agency’s assessment assigns a low degree of confidence in this conclusion, which suggests that the evidence is insufficient, unconvincing or contradictory.

The earlier reports on the origin of the Covid-19 were divided whether the coronavirus was out of a Chinese laboratory, potentially by mistake or whether it occurred naturally. The new rating is probably not to arrange the debate.

In fact, intelligence staff claim that this may never be resolved due to lack of cooperation by Chinese authorities.

The CIA “continues to evaluate that both the scripts associated with research and the natural origin of the Covid-19 pandemic remain plausible,” the agency statement said about its new assessment.

The conclusion is based on fresh analysis of the intelligence for the spread of the virus, its scientific properties and the work and conditions of Chinese laboratories for virology.

Legislators have pressed US spy agencies for more information on the origin of the virus, which has led to blocking, economic cataclysms and millions of deaths. This is a matter of significant internal and geopolitical consequences as the world continues to fight the heritage of the pandemic.

Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on Saturday that “he was pleased that the CIA had ended in the last days of the Biden administration that the theory of the laboratory pound was the most plain explanation” and he praised Ratcliffe for a declassification assessment.

“Now, the most important thing is to get China to pay for plague to unfold the world,” Cotton said in a statement.

China’s Embassy in Washington did not immediately return messages looking for a comment. In the past, Chinese authorities rejected speculation about the origin of Covid-19 as useless and motivated by politics.

While the origin of the virus remains unknown, scientists believe that the most common hypothesis is that it spreads into bats, like many coronaviruses, before infecting another species, probably washing dogs, cats cicite or bamboo rats. In turn, the infection has spread to people who manage or dispose of these animals to a market in Wuhan, where the first cases of humans appear at the end of November 2019.

However, some official investigations have raised the question of whether the virus escaped from a Laboratory in Ama.

Two years ago, a report from the Energy Department concluded that the expiration of a laboratory was the most common origin, although this report also expressed low confidence in finding.

That same year, the then FBI director Christopher Urai said his agency believed that the “most likely” virus had spread after avoiding a laboratory.

Ratcliffe, who was the director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term, said he was also favorable to the laboratory scenario.

“Laboratory leakage is the only theory supported by science, intelligence and common sense,” Ratcliffe said in 2023.

The CIA said it would continue to evaluate any new information that could change its assessment.