Security personnel stand guard outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan as members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus make a visit to the institute in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province on February 3, 2021.
Hector Retamal | AFP | Getty Images
WASHINGTON — The U.S. intelligence community said that it is divided over the exact origin of Covid-19 in China, a revelation that comes three months after President Joe Biden requested a more in-depth review.
One intelligence agency said it assessed with moderate confidence that the virus infected humans after an incident related to a lab, according to a report released Friday afternoon. Four agencies said they reached low-confidence assessments that the virus had a natural origin.
The report did not name the agencies.
“After examining all available intelligence reporting and other information, though, the IC remains divided on the most likely origin of Covid-19. All agencies assess that two hypotheses are plausible: natural exposure to an infected animal and a laboratory-associated incident,” the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies wrote in the report.
The report, compiled by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, found that the virus was not developed as a biological weapon. The intelligence community also assessed that Chinese officials did not have foreknowledge of the virus before the initial outbreak that triggered a global pandemic.
The report…
