More than three years after the first case of Covid-19 in Wuhan, US intelligence claims to have no evidence that Covid-19 was created, in chinese’s laboratory.
The head of US intelligence said Friday that there was no evidence that the Covid-19 virus was created in the Chinese government’s Wuhan research lab.
Drawing on intelligence collected by various member agencies of the US intelligence community (IC), the ODNI report said some scientists at the Wuhan lab had done genetic engineering of coronaviruses similar to Covid-19. But the US “has no information” indicating they had done such work on the specific Covid-9 virus, known as SARS-CoV-2, or on any “close progenitor, or a backbone virus that is closely related-enough to have been the source of the pandemic.”
Some lawmakers allege that the virus was created out of so-called gain-of-function genetic engineering research at Wuhan, and that Beijing had covered up evidence to show it was a man-made disease.
Reiterating a conclusion announced in March, the ODNI report said “almost all” of its constituent agencies, which include the NSA, the CIA and FBI, assess that Covid-19 was not genetically engineered and most believe as well it was not laboratory-adapted. But the ODNI report, as in March, did not dismiss the possibility that Covid-19 was being examined in the Wuhan lab at the time and may have leaked out through carelessness.
ODNI said the intelligence community remained divided on whether the pandemic arose from a natural occurence of the virus — perhaps transferred from animals like bats — or a from lab leak.
Maïssa Ben Fares, with AFP
