US intel review inconclusive on COVID-19 origin

The 90-day sprint to get to the bottom of the origins of COVID-19 found … not much.

A summary of an intelligence community report released Friday was inconclusive as to whether COVID-19 originated in a lab or jumped from animals to humans naturally, though U.S. officials stated that it was not developed as a biological weapon.

The summary said both the natural theory and lab leak theory are plausible, but noted that Chinese officials “did not have foreknowledge of the virus before the initial outbreak of COVID-19 emerged.”

“The IC assesses that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, probably emerged and infected humans through an initial small-scale exposure that occurred no later than November 2019,” according to a two-page summary of the report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

“We judge the virus was not developed as a biological weapon. Most agencies also assess with low confidence that SARS-CoV-2 probably was not genetically engineered,” the report stated, while noting two elements of the intelligence community did not believe there was sufficient evidence to draw a conclusion.

Impact: The push to find the origin of the virus has been politically charged from the start, and Friday’s report is unlikely to significantly change the debate over the issue. The report shows an intelligence community largely divided over the origins of the disease, with several of the 19 different agencies that comprise it coming to different conclusions.