The CIA has stated that it believes the COVID-19 pandemic is "more likely" to have originated from a lab leak rather than a natural cause. This "low confidence" conclusion came just days after John Ratcliffe became the director of the CIA under US President Donald Trump.
A CIA spokesperson confirmed on Saturday, “The CIA continues to assess both possible causes for the spread of the deadly disease in 2019.” They also added, “We have low confidence in this judgment and will keep evaluating new credible intelligence or open-source information that could change the assessment.”
Reports suggest that this assessment was ordered during the presidency of Joe Biden and completed before Ratcliffe took office.
After this statement, three US agencies, including the FBI and the Department of Energy, also supported the idea that COVID-19 most likely escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China.
In response, China's embassy in Washington rejected the CIA's assessment, calling it "misleading" and part of a political manipulation against China.
The embassy spokesperson, Liu Pengyu, said the virus's source is a complex scientific issue that should be determined by experts, not politicians. He urged everyone to avoid conspiracy theories and respect science.
Liu further emphasised that China has always been transparent, pointing to a 2021 joint study by the World Health Organization and China, which stated that a lab leak was "extremely unlikely."
Four other US intelligence agencies, along with the National Intelligence Council, believe the virus most likely spread through natural transmission.
Ratcliffe, in response, has repeatedly said that, based on intelligence and scientific reasoning, he believes the virus most likely leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
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