American intelligence agency CIA announced Saturday that it now considers a Chinese laboratory origin to be the most likely source of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the agency’s assessment assigns “low confidence” to this conclusion, AP reported.
The report was declassified and released at the direction of CIA Director John Ratcliffe and does not rely on new intelligence but builds on existing data about the virus’s spread, scientific characteristics, and the operations of Chinese virology labs. The agency also said that both lab-related and natural origins remain plausible.
The findings come amid growing global scrutiny of COVID-19’s origins. The pandemic, which broke out in late 2019 in Wuhan, China, caused millions of deaths and triggered worldwide disruption.
US intelligence officials admit they may never definitively determine the virus’s origin. A lack of transparency and cooperation from Chinese authorities continues to obstruct efforts to investigate the circumstances surrounding the pandemic’s outbreak, the agency argues.
In response to the report, Chinese officials dismissed the CIA’s findings as politically motivated. Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for China’s US embassy, criticized the assessment as lacking credibility and called for an end to “politicization and stigmatization” of COVID-19’s origins.
The new report echoes earlier investigations, such as a 2021 Energy Department analysis and FBI statements, which also supported the lab-leak theory but with low confidence.
Meanwhile, many scientists argue that the virus likely passed from bats to humans through an intermediary animal host, possibly at a wildlife market in Wuhan.