No direct evidence Covid-19 started in Wuhan lab: US intelligence report

The four-page report said the intelligence agencies still could not rule out the possibility that the virus came from a laboratory.

Reuters,

Jun 24 2023, 10:58 ist
updated: Jun 24 2023, 15:01 ist

Representative image. Credit: Pixabay Photo

US intelligence agencies found no direct evidence that the Covid-19 pandemic stemmed from an incident at China's Wuhan Institute of Virology, a report declassified on Friday said.

The four-page report said the intelligence agencies still could not rule out the possibility that the virus came from a laboratory, however, and had not been able to discover the origins of the pandemic.

"The Central Intelligence Agency and another agency remain unable to determine the precise origin of the Covid-19 pandemic, as both (natural and lab) hypotheses rely on significant assumptions or face challenges with conflicting reporting," the report said.

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The agencies said that while "extensive work" had been conducted on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute (WIV), they had not found evidence of a specific incident that could have caused the outbreak.

"We continue to have no indication that the WIV's pre-pandemic research holdings included SARSCoV-2 or a close progenitor, nor any direct evidence that a specific research-related incident occurred involving WIV personnel before the pandemic that could have caused the Covid pandemic," the report said.