Coronavirus Global situation
US spy agencies say origins of Covid-19 may never be known
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WASHINGTON • US intelligence agencies said they may never be able to identify the origins of Covid-19, as they released a new version of their review of whether the coronavirus came from animal-to-human transmission or leaked from a lab.
The Office of the US Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) said in a declassified report that a natural origin and a lab leak are both plausible hypotheses for how Sars-CoV-2 first infected humans. But it said analysts disagree on which is more likely or whether any definitive assessment can be made at all.
The report dismissed suggestions that the virus originated as a bioweapon, saying proponents of the theory "do not have direct access to the Wuhan Institute of Virology" and have been accused of spreading disinformation.
The report issued on Friday is an update of a 90-day review that President Joe Biden's administration released in August, amid intense political infighting over how much to blame China for the effects of the global pandemic rather than governments that may not have moved quickly enough to protect citizens.
China responded on Friday by criticising the report.
"The US' moves of relying on its intelligence apparatus instead of scientists to trace the origins of Covid-19 is a complete political farce," Mr Liu Pengyu, spokes-man for China's embassy in Washington, said in a statement.
"It will only undermine science-based origins study and hinder the global effort of finding the source of the virus."
The ODNI report said four US spy agencies and a multi-agency body have "low confidence" that Covid-19 originated from an infected animal or a related virus.
The report said US agencies and the global scientific community lacked "clinical samples or a complete understanding of epidemiological data from the earliest Covid-19 cases" and added that it could revisit this if more evidence surfaces.
China has faced international criticism for failing to cooperate more fully in investigations of the origins of Covid-19. The embassy statement also dismissed that.
"We have been supporting science-based efforts on origins tracing and will continue to stay actively engaged. That said, we firmly oppose attempts to politicise this issue," it said.
REUTERS
