US intelligence says there is no evidence that nCoV was created at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Hubei Province, China.
According to a declassified report by the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on June 23, the US intelligence community does not rule out the possibility that nCoV originated from a laboratory, but they also cannot determine where the pandemic originated.
"The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and another agency are still unable to determine the exact origin of Covid-19, because both the natural and laboratory-originated hypotheses are based on assumptions or challenged by conflicting information," according to the ODNI report.
Security personnel stand guard outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology during a World Health Organization mission to investigate the origins of Covid-19 in Wuhan, Hubei province, February 3, 2021. Photo: Reuters
The report said that although coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) had been "expanded", US intelligence agencies had found no evidence of a leak that could have caused a pandemic.
"We continue to find no evidence that pre-pandemic research at WIV was related to SARS-CoV-2 or a related virus, nor is there any direct evidence that pre-pandemic individual research incidents at WIV could have caused Covid-19," the report said.
The origin of Covid-19 has been a hotly debated topic in the US since the first human cases of nCoV appeared in Wuhan in late 2019. US President Joe Biden signed an executive order in March to declassify information related to the origin of the pandemic.
Covid-19 began to spread rapidly in early 2020. Since then, it has killed nearly 7 million people globally, disrupting economic activities, trade, and global travel, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
In February, the US Department of Energy, which oversees many biological research facilities, said that the nCoV may have leaked from a laboratory, but it was not related to a weapons program. FBI Director Christopher Wray said that Covid-19 may have originated from a lab leak in Wuhan.
Chinese officials have long disputed the conclusion that Covid-19 could have leaked from their laboratories, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products.
Hong Hanh (According to Reuters )
Source link
Comment (0)