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China Lab Leak Most Likely Caused the Covid-19 Pandemic, US Confirms

The US energy department and FBI reached the same conclusion for different reasons. Credit: Greek Reporter
The US energy department and FBI reached the same conclusion for different reasons. Credit: Greek Reporter

The theory that COVID was leaked by a lab in Wuhan, China has been officially confirmed by US authorities. The US Energy Department concluded that an accidental laboratory leak in China most likely caused the Covid-19 pandemic, US media reported on Sunday.

The conclusion is included in an updated and classified 2021 US energy department study provided to the White House and senior American lawmakers, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported.

The department’s finding came in an update to a document from the Office of National Intelligence director Avril Haines, the WSJ reported. It follows a finding reportedly issued with “moderate confidence” by the FBI that the virus spread after leaking out of a Chinese laboratory.

The conclusion from the energy department – which oversees a network of 17 US laboratories, including areas of advanced biology – would be significant despite the fact that, as the report said, the agency made its updated judgment with “low confidence”.

US officials, WSJ said, also declined to expand on new intelligence or analysis that led the energy department to change its position. They also noted that the energy department and FBI arrived at the same conclusion for different reasons.

Conflicting conclusions of how Covid started in China

Conflicting hypotheses on the origins of Covid-19 have centered either on an unidentified animal transmitting the virus to humans or its accidental leak from a Chinese research laboratory in Wuhan.

The energy department’s updated findings run counter to reports by four other US intelligence agencies that concluded the epidemic started as the result of natural transmission from an infected animal. Two agencies remain undecided.

Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, declined to confirm the intelligence. But he said President Biden had ordered that the national labs be brought into the effort to determine the origins of the outbreak, so the government was using “every tool” it had.

“There is a variety of views in the intelligence community,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “Some elements of the intelligence community have reached conclusions on one side, some on the other. A number of them have said they just don’t have enough information to be sure.”

The Covid-19 virus was first identified in an outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019. Attempts to contain it there failed, allowing the virus to spread to other areas of Asia and later worldwide.

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern on 30 January 2020, and a pandemic on 11 March 2020.

As of 26 February 2023, the pandemic had caused more than 675 million cases and 6.87 million confirmed deaths, making it one of the deadliest in history.

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