US intelligence services said they would probably never establish the root cause of the appearance of a coronavirus causing COVID-19, but continue to believe that it was not specifically created as a biological weapon.
Bureau of the National Intelligence Director (this post is now occupied by Euril Haynes) published a new version of the analysis of the origins of Koronavirus (the previous administration of Byyden published in August). It still considers two hypotheses of its origin: leakage from the laboratory (the Wuhan Institute of Virology is usually mentioned in this context) and natural mutation during the transmission of the virus, previously spread among animals, to a person, writes the Russian BBC service.
Both versions remain equally plausible, no new data allowing to dwell on one of them and discard the second, and did not appear, the report of the American intelligence community says.
Report declassified and published on the website of the Bureau of the National Intelligence Director.
US intelligence community includes 17 departments. Four of them (specifically, none of the departments are called), the version of the natural origin of the virus is, however, they recognize that they have a low degree of confidence. At the same time, one service believes that the first cases of human contamination COVID-19 became the result of leakage from the laboratory, possibly during experiments or circulation of infected animals in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This conclusion for analysts of the special service causes a slightly higher degree of confidence – they estimate it as moderate.
The report notes that Beijing still impedes international investigation and refuses to share information.