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Intelligence agencies say that Chinese leaders did not know about the virus before the global pandemic began.
According to a review ordered by President Joe Biden on Friday, US intelligence agencies still disagree on the origin of the coronavirus, but believe that Chinese leaders did not understand the virus before the global pandemic began.
According to a non-confidential summary, four members of the US intelligence community were not confident enough to say that the virus was originally transmitted from animals to humans. The fifth intelligence agency believed with moderate confidence that the first human infection was related to the laboratory. Analysts do not believe that the virus was developed as a biological weapon.
China’s refusal to cooperate fully with the United States and international investigations of the virus has hindered the review of the origin of the virus. The National Intelligence Director stated that China “continues to obstruct global investigations, refuses to share information, and blames other countries, including the United States.”
The cause of the coronavirus remains a pressing global public health and safety issue. In the United States, many conservatives accuse Chinese scientists of developing Covid-19 in the laboratory and allowing it to leak. The scientific consensus remains that the virus is most likely to migrate from animals through so-called zoonotic transmission.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticized the US investigation before the report was released. The Director-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Fu Cong, said at a briefing for foreign journalists, “Scapegoat for China cannot whitewash the United States.”
“If they want to accuse China baselessly, they’d better be prepared to accept China’s counterattack,” he said.
In May, Biden ordered a 90-day review of what the White House said about the preliminary findings, which led to “two possible scenarios”: animal-to-human transmission or laboratory leaks. The White House stated at the time that two agencies in the 18-member intelligence community tended to assume natural transmission, while the other agency preferred laboratory leaks.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not determine which agencies supported the two hypotheses on Friday. But it pointed to some of the same obstacles faced by the World Health Organization and scientists around the world: the lack of clinical samples and data from the earliest Covid-19 cases. The office said that Beijing’s cooperation is likely to be needed to make further progress.
During the review, the intelligence agency consulted experts from outside the allies and the government. An epidemiologist was brought to the National Intelligence Committee, a high-level group of experts that consulted the head of the intelligence community.
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