Competing COVID-19 origin theories not ‘more likely than the other’

The U.S. intelligence community said Thursday that it is unsure whether the coronavirus was more likely to have come from a lab or through human contact with infected animals.

A statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) describes an intelligence community split over competing theories for the origin of the virus.

Director of National Intelligence for Strategic Communications Amanda Schoch said in a statement that “the U.S. Intelligence Community does not know exactly where, when, or how the COVID-19 virus was transmitted initially but has coalesced around two likely scenarios: either it emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals or it was a laboratory accident.”

“While two elements of the IC lean toward the former scenario and one leans more toward the latter — each with low or moderate confidence — the majority of elements within the IC do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other,” she added.

The statement did not identify which of the three agencies thought a lab scenario was more likely than zoonotic transmission, but it comes as the White House has backed efforts to reopen discussions around the lab scenario, which was initially dismissed as unlikely.

Follows: President Biden called on the intelligence community to “redouble their efforts” looking into COVID-19’s origins and report back in 90 days.

The Senate passed a bill mandating the ODNI to declassify information about the virus’s origins on Wednesday night.

The increased interest in how the pandemic began comes after The Wall Street Journal reported on a U.S. intelligence report earlier this week that said researchers at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill with flu-like symptoms in November 2019.