Five years after the Covid-19 pandemic, the origin of the virus which has killed more than 7 million people worldwide, including 1.2 million Americans, remains controversial. In a press release published on Saturday January 25, the CIA announced that it now favors the hypothesis of a laboratory leak, reports The New York Times.
A position which contrasts with the caution displayed until recently by the intelligence agency, underlines the newspaper. “For years, the CIA has claimed that it does not have enough information to determine whether the pandemic emerged naturally in a market in Wuhan, China, or following an accidental leak at a laboratory in search for this city.”
Agency officials clarified that this change in position was not based on any new elements, but on a more in-depth examination of the conditions under which high-security laboratories in Wuhan province were working when the pandemic began. .
The intelligence community divided
When he was sworn in, John Ratcliffe, the new director of the CIA, declared that a new examination of the origins of Covid was among his priorities. One of his first decisions was to declassify the agency's assessment ordered by Jake Sullivan, the Biden administration's national security adviser, who was “in the works for some time”.
-Origins of virus continue to divide US intelligence community, notes The Wall Street Journal, “largely because the Chinese government has not cooperated with international investigations”. Five agencies, including the National Intelligence Council and the Defense Intelligence Agency, estimate “without certainty” that one “natural transmission” is likely the origin of the outbreak, but no animal host that may have transmitted the virus has been identified. The FBI was the first agency to indicate with a “certitude relative” that a lab leak was a likely explanation.
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