A declassified US intelligence report has concluded COVID wasn't developed as a biological weapon - but conceded that coronavirus may ...
A declassified US intelligence report has concluded COVID wasn't developed as a biological weapon - but conceded that coronavirus may well have emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The paper issued by the Director of National Intelligence on Friday elaborates on findings released in August of a 90-day review ordered by President Joe Biden.
That review said that U.S. intelligence agencies were divided on the origins of the virus, but that analysts do not believe the virus was developed as a bioweapon, and that most agencies believe the virus was not genetically engineered.
Four agencies within the US intelligence community said with low confidence that the virus was initially transmitted from an animal to a human.
An unclassified intelligence report on the origins of COVID-19 was released by the Director of National Intelligence on findings released in August of a 90-day review ordered by President Joe Biden
This graphic sums up the key findings of the report - and reveals that intelligence officials have been unable to definitively say how COVID emerged
A fifth intelligence agency believed with moderate confidence that the first human infection was linked to a lab.
The so-called 'lab leak theory' has been a source of controversy, and was initially dismissed after being touted by Donald Trump during his time as president.
But intelligence officials now consider a possible spill at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and infection caused by a host animal as the two most likely sources of the outbreak, with both given equal weighting by investigators.
They added that China's continued obfuscation over COVID - including allegations that the United States itself is responsible for the outbreak - mean it is unlikely US investigators will ever find out exactly where the virus came from.
Barring an unforeseen breakthrough, intelligence agencies won´t be able to conclude whether COVID-19 spread by animal-to-human transmission or leaked from a lab, officials said Friday in releasing a fuller version of their review into the origins of the pandemic
That review said that U.S. intelligence agencies were divided on the origins of the virus but that analysts do not believe the virus was developed as a bioweapon and that most agencies believe the virus was not genetically engineered
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, who spearheaded the report into the origins of COVID
The Wuhan Institute of Virology, pictured, is a source of much of the debate regarding the origins of the deadly virus, amid claims COVID could have leaked from it
Biden launched the review amid growing momentum for the theory - initially broadly dismissed by experts - that the virus leaked from the Wuhan lab.
China remains an exceedingly difficult place for intelligence operations and has fought back against allegations that it mishandled the emergence of the pandemic, which has infected more than 245 million people and killed close to 5 million people.
Senior officials involved in the full report´s drafting said they hoped it would better inform the public about the challenges of determining the virus's origins.
'We don't think we're one or two reports away from being able to understand it,' said one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.
The full report notes that the Wuhan Institute of Virology 'previously created chimeras, or combinations, of SARS-like coronaviruses, but this information does not provide insight into whether SARS Cov-2 was genetically engineered by the WIV.'
Information that lab researchers sought medical treatment for a respiratory illness in November 2019 'is not diagnostic of the pandemic´s origins,' the report said.
It also poured cold water on speculation that the outbreak may have begun even earlier than November, after satellite photos showed hospital parking lots in Wuhan far busier than normal during the summer of 2019.
And allegations that China launched the virus as a bioweapon were dismissed because their proponents 'do not have direct access to the Wuhan Institute of Virology,' are making scientifically invalid claims or are accused of spreading disinformation, the report said.
The so-called 'lab leak theory' has been a source of controversy as former President Donald Trump and his supporters long argued that a lab leak was possible
NIH Director Dr. Anthony Fauci has been in the crossfires of his agency's dealings with the Wuhan lab
President Joe Biden ordered the review of the origins of the COVID-19 virus
Prior to writing the report, analysts conducted what the report describes as a 'Team A/Team B' debate to try to strengthen or weaken each hypothesis.
Confirming with 100% certainty the origin of a virus is often not fast, easy or always even possible.
In the case of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS - a disease caused by a beta coronavirus, like the current coronavirus - researchers first identified the virus in February 2003.
Later that year, scientists discovered the likely intermediary hosts: Himalayan palm civets found at live-animal markets in Guangdong, China. But it wasn´t until 2017 that researchers traced the likely original source of the virus to bat caves in China´s Yunnan province.
The lab leak theory - which was once rejected by medical experts as a conspiracy - has gained traction in recent months, prompting President Joe Biden to dispatch intelligence agencies in May to find answers and report back in 90 days.
At the halfway point, no concrete evidence has emerged that supports one hypothesis over the other, but multiple sources overseeing the review told CNN on Friday that the intelligence community is firmly divided over the two theories.
A person familiar with the probe told CNN barring a smoking gun evidence, which doesn't exist right now, the 90-review will end with pros and cons to the two major theories.
As it stands now, two intelligence agencies seem to be leaning to the natural-occurring origin theory; while one agency is leaning towards the lab leak, CNN reported.
The news outlet didn't mention the agencies but said all three are lukewarm about either theory.
The theory that the coronavirus escaped from a lab in Wuhan is considered at least as credible as a natural origin, senior Biden administration officials told CNN
Sources told CNN the intelligence community is split at the halfway point of Biden's 90-day push for answers, but no evidence has emerged to push the needle
Biden ordered intelligence agencies to investigate the possibility that the coronavirus escaped from a lab in China in May and report back in 90 days
A day earlier, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) admitted there was a 'premature push' to rule out a potential link between the coronavirus pandemic and a lab leak.
WHO director general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said they're pushing China to be more transparent as the international community searches for answers.
Ghebreyesus's comments come just weeks after he suggested that Beijing had not cooperated fully with investigations and called on China to help solve the origin of the virus out of 'respect' for the dead.
China's foreign ministry spokesperson hit back with scathing statement about the US and said the country has been open and transparent all along.
'For quite some time, a handful of countries, led by the US, have been stigmatizing the epidemic, putting a geographical label on the virus and politicizing the origins study,' the statement reads.
'They blatantly disregard the achievements scientists made together and turn a blind eye to science and truth for their own selfish interests. They publicly clamor for investigations conducted by intelligence agencies and falsely accuse China of not being transparent and cooperative by all means regardless of the facts.
'These actions have seriously disrupted and undermined international cooperation in global origins study, created great difficulties and obstacles for countries to fight the epidemic and save lives, and aroused wide dissatisfaction and opposition in the international community.'
WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it was premature to rule of the theory that the virus might have escaped from a Chinese government laboratory in Wuhan
The White House has hit back with public threats over the last month.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan warned Beijing of potential consequences last month, telling Fox News that China will face 'isolation in the international community' if it does not cooperate.
He also told CNN that 'if it turns out that China refuses to live up to its international obligations, we will have to consider our responses at that point.'
With tensions escalating, the US-China relationship has become something akin to a high-wire tightrope act, which is why officials are not expecting a definitive answer to where and how the coronavirus came to be.
The Huanan wet market, where scientists say the first cluster of infections were officially reported, is just a few hundred yards from the Wuhan Centres for Disease Prevention and Control and only a few miles from the the Wuhan Institute of Virology Lab, where scientists were reportedly conducting experiments on bats before the pandemic began.
The lab is one of only a handful in the world that is cleared to handle Class 4 pathogens — dangerous viruses that pose a high risk of person-to-person transmission.
Three researchers from the institute sought medical care in November 2019, before the virus began to spread, according to a recent report from the Wall Street Journal.
There are scientists who have claimed for more than a year that the genomic sequence of the virus is such that it must have been engineered by humans.
This follows revelations that a government laboratory in California concluded last May 2020 that COVID-19 may have escaped from a facility in Wuhan.
Scientists at the the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, near Berkeley, analyzed the genetic makeup of the virus to try to understand how it evolved.
They passed their May 27, 2020 findings on to the State Department in October. The five-month delay was not explained.
On January 15 the State Department published a fact sheet about COVID-19, which said that 'circumstantial' evidence suggested a lab leak theory was possible.
The secret document the California lab produced was not known about until Monday, when The Wall Street Journal reported on its existence.
People familiar with the Lawrence Livermore study said that it was prepared by their 'Z Division,' which is its intelligence arm.
The California lab has not confirmed the contents of their report, which remains secret.
And last month an explosive new study obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com suggested the scientists created Covid-19 and then tried to cover their tracks by reverse-engineering versions of the virus to make it look like it evolved naturally from bats.
The paper's authors, British Professor Angus Dalgleish and Norwegian scientist Dr. Birger Sørensen, wrote that they have had 'prima facie evidence of retro-engineering in China' for a year - but were ignored by academics and major journals.
Dalgleish is a professor of oncology at St George's University, London, and is best known for his breakthrough creating the first working 'HIV vaccine', to treat diagnosed patients and allow them to go off medication for months.
Sørensen, a virologist, is chair of pharmaceutical company, Immunor, which developed a coronavirus vaccine candidate called Biovacc-19. Dalgleish also has share options in the firm.
The shocking allegations in the study include accusations of 'deliberate destruction, concealment or contamination of data' at Chinese labs, and it notes the silencing and disappearance of scientists in the communist country who spoke out.
The journal article, which has been submitted for publication, is set to make waves among the scientific community, as the majority of experts have until recently staunchly denied the origins of COVID-19 were anything other than a natural infection leaping from animals to humans.
Some experts still believe the virus was transmitted from a bat to some other species of animal, then to humans. However, its origins remain unproven.
The Wuhan lab was famed for conducting tests on bat coronaviruses, with experts who support the leak theory saying the same city being ground zero for the outbreak is too great a coincidence to ignore.
Senator Rand Paul and NIH director Dr. Anthony Fauci have gone at it in hearings, which are publicly broadcasted – in fact, the duo have frequently clashed publicly both in the Senate and out over NIH funds.
Senator Rand Paul got in a heated exchange with Dr. Anthony Fauci at a hearing when he again pushed the nation's top immunologist on whether the U.S. funded gain of function research in Wuhan. Fauci responded with, 'You do not know what you are talking about'
He defended allocating $600,000 to a group called EcoHealth Alliance, which then paid the Wuhan Institute of Virology to study the risk that bat coronaviruses could infect humans.
Paul grilled Fauci in May about the $600,000 in funding allocated for EcoHealth Alliance, which turned around and paid the Wuhan Institute of Virology to study how bat coronavirus could infect humans.
Fauci defended that allocation during a hearing before a congressional budget committee
The $600,000 in funding was reinstated in August after a different earlier grant was blocked in April 2020 amid concern over safety at the Wuhan lab.
Paul insisted during the terse exchange that the money was being used for gain of function research. Fauci, however, insisted the money was not used for this purpose.
'You are entirely and completely incorrect,' Fauci told Paul at the hearing. 'The NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute.'
Gain of function research looks at both transmitting disease between animals and humans and is a way for scientists to alter organisms and diseases to study how they could become deadlier or more transmissible.
The NIH definition of gain of function includes 'scientific research that increases the transmissibility among animals is gain-of-function.'
The Kentucky senator repeatedly questioned Fauci on gain of function – and the U.S. indirectly funding that research in China – on a few occasions. The theory has emerged in conservative circles as a potential answer to the origins of COVID-19.
Last month, Paul also accused Fauci of lying and demanded he be fired after a slew of his emails were made public.
Paul claimed to Fox News early in June that thousands of emails revealed by Buzzfeed News and the Washington Post proved Fauci may have been in-part responsible for the development of COVID-19.
The emails reveal that Fauci was warned privately of the possibility that the origins of COVID were due to a lab leak in Wuhan – even though he publicly dismissed the ideas and allowed Democrats to call it a conspiracy.
The email revelation did not show Fauci’s personal take on the theory.
Paul gave Fauci the opportunity to retract his May 11 statement claiming the U.S. did not fund gain of function research with it's $600,000 grant, saying 'Dr. Fauci, knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress, do you wish to retract your statement?'
Fauci got quite animated during the exchange, as he pointed his fingers at Paul for being a 'liar'
Paul pointed back his pencil, and insisted the evidence shows National Institute of Health funding went to the Wuhan lab, who he claims then used that money to do research on how to make a bat coronavirus transmittable to humans and more infectious and deadly
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