Beijing: The CIA has changed its position on the origin of COVID-19 and now supports the theory of an accidental leak of the virus from a lab in China’s Wuhan, the New York Times reported.
The CIA has said for years that it did not have enough information to conclude whether the COVID pandemic had arisen naturally in a market in Wuhan or as a result of an accidental leak at a research lab, but this week, the agency released a new assessment in which analysts said they now favored the lab theory, the publication said.
It noted that there was no new intelligence behind the agency’s change of position. According to the publication’s sources, the CIA’s latest analysis is based in part on a closer look at conditions in Wuhan labs before the outbreak of the pandemic.
Earlier, following a two-year investigation, US congressmen stated that the coronavirus most likely had originated in a laboratory and spread as a result of a leak, according to a published report by lawmakers.
The United States previously publicly announced an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus, after which China’s Wuhan Institute found itself in the spotlight of the American government. Subsequently, the United States accused this research institution of refusing to cooperate and provide the requested documentation. The US intelligence community made it clear that it was developing two versions of the origin of the coronavirus — a leak from a Chinese laboratory and a natural infection of humans from an animal.
In March 2021, the World Health Organization published the full version of the report of an international group of experts from the organization on a visit to Wuhan to establish the origin of the coronavirus, in which experts called its leak from a laboratory “extremely unlikely.” The report also said that the new type of the coronavirus had most likely transmitted to humans from bats through another animal. Another version of the covid origin, direct transmission to humans from animals, was assessed by experts as “from possible to probable.” The WHO mission also called the version of transmission of the virus through refrigerated products “possible.”
UNI SPUTNIK
