CIA shifts stance on Covid-19 origins; claims lab leak ‘more likely’

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has changed its official position on the origin of Covid-19, stating on Saturday that the virus was “more likely” to have leaked from a Chinese laboratory than to have been transmitted by animals.
A CIA spokesperson said in a statement, quoted by AFP, “CIA assesses with low confidence that a research-related origin of the Covid-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin based on the available body of reporting.” The agency had not previously made any determination on whether

Covid

had been unleashed by a laboratory mishap or spilled over from animals.
“CIA continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of the Covid-19 pandemic remain plausible,” the spokesperson noted.
This new assessment comes after John Ratcliffe was confirmed as the CIA director under Donald Trump’s second White House administration on Thursday.

Ratcliffe, who previously served as the director of national intelligence from 2020-2021 during Trump’s first term, believes that Covid-19 leaked from the

Wuhan Institute of Virology

. In an interview published Friday with the right-wing outlet Breitbart, he stated that making an assessment on Covid’s origins would be a “day-one” priority.
“The agency is going to get off the sidelines,” Ratcliffe told Breitbart.
Additionally, a US official told AFP that the shift was based on a new analysis of existing intelligence ordered by previous CIA director William Burns, which was completed before Ratcliffe’s arrival this week. Some US agencies, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Energy, support the lab-leak theory, albeit with varying levels of confidence, while most elements of the intelligence community lean toward natural origins.
Ratcliffe emphasised the importance of providing the president with comprehensive intelligence for interactions with China. “As President Trump deals with [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping], he needs to be armed with the very best intelligence and to be able to talk about China in a way that if they caused or contributed to the death of a million Americans, the president needs to be armed with that,” Ratcliffe said.
US intelligence agencies including the CIA have consistently maintained their inability to definitively determine the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, as reported by the NYT. According to unnamed officials cited by the newspaper, this shift in perspective of them leaning towards ‘lab leak’ is not based on newly acquired intelligence. Rather, it stems from an analysis of the operational conditions within Wuhan’s high-security laboratories during the pre-pandemic period. However, the CIA’s spokesperson has emphasised that the market origin theory maintains its credibility, and the agency remains committed to examining any credible new intelligence that surfaces.
The origins of Covid-19 is a widely debated topic. Two primary hypotheses have persisted – natural emergence from a Wuhan market or an inadvertent release from a Wuhan research facility.
Proponents of the lab-leak hypothesis highlight that the earliest known Covid-19 cases emerged in Wuhan, China, a major coronavirus research hub, roughly 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) from the nearest bat populations carrying similar SARS-like viruses. Advocates of the “lab leak theory” assert that the virus emerged from research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a laboratory facility in China.