The United States (U.S.) Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has released an assessment stating that it is more likely that COVID-19 originated from a Chinese laboratory than from animals.
A CIA spokesperson said that “the origin of the pandemic being linked to research is more likely than a natural origin based on available reports.”
The decision to release this assessment is one of the first made by the new CIA Director, John Ratcliffe, who was appointed by the new U.S. President Donald Trump and assumed the role on Thursday.
Ratcliffe has long favored the “lab leak” theory, claiming that the COVID-19 most likely “leaked” from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The institute is a 40-minute drive from the Huanan market, where the first cluster of infections appeared.
Furthermore, he said in an interview that he wants the CIA to abandon its neutral stance on the origin of the virus.
“One of the things I’ve talked about a lot is addressing threats from China on multiple fronts, and that ties back to the reason why a million U.S. citizens died and why the CIA has been sitting on the sidelines for five years, not providing an assessment on the origin of COVID-19,” he said.
