US intelligence agencies to probe origins of COVID-19

In a statement, the US president said the majority of the US intelligence community had "coalesced" around two likely scenarios: that the virus was transmitted to humans via contact with an infected animal or it emerged from a lab accident.

" there was not sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other," Biden said.

He added that two of 18 intelligence agencies lean toward the animal link and one toward the lab idea, "each with low or moderate confidence."

President Biden said he had asked US intelligence agencies “to redouble their efforts to collect and analyse information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion” and report back to him in 90 days.

“As part of that report, I have asked for areas of further inquiry that may be required, including specific questions for China,” the US president said.

China’s embassy in the United States on Thursday criticised the US’s move, saying that “politicising” the issue would hamper investigations into the origins of the coronavirus.

China supports “a comprehensive study of all early cases of COVID-19 found worldwide and a thorough investigation into some secretive bases and biological laboratories all over the world,” the embassy said in remarks attributed to a spokesperson that were posted on its website.

It is pertinent to mention here that US intelligence agencies have been examining reports that researchers at the Wuhan virology laboratory were seriously ill in 2019, one month before the first cases of COVID-19 were reported.

But US government sources cautioned earlier this week that there is still no proof the disease originated at the lab.

Meanwhile, Biden said on Wednesday that “the United States will also keep working with like-minded partners around the world to press China to participate in a full, transparent, evidence-based international investigation and to provide access to all relevant data and evidence”.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the president’s directive should not be interpreted as a US rejection of the WHO study but rather aimed at providing the best US information and resources to resolve ongoing questions.

“The WHO doing their thing and the [intelligence community] doing what they’re doing currently is not mutually exclusive,” Jean-Pierre said.

More than a year after Covid-19 touched off the worst pandemic in more than a century, scientists have yet to determine its origins. The closest related viruses to SARS-CoV-2 were found in bats over 1,000 miles from the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the disease erupted in late 2019.

Initially, cases were tied to a fresh food market and possibly the wildlife sold there. An investigation in early 2021 has highlighted the possibility that they acted as a vector, transferring the virus from bats to humans.

More politically charged theories allege the virus accidentally escaped from a nearby research laboratory or entered China from another country via imported frozen food. Amid all the posturing, governments and scientists agree that deciphering the creation story is key to reducing the risk of future pandemics.