Under the direction of then-President Joe Biden, the CIA investigated the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic, and determined the origin was likely a lab leak in China.
Despite low confidence that the origin was an accidental lab leak, the agency said a natural origin for the virus that killed millions around the world is still possible, as reported by CNN.
The World Health Organization’s statistics show that 14.8 million individuals died from COVID-19 by the end of 2021.
New CIA Director John Ratcliffe promised that finding an origin of the pandemic would be a day 1 priority for him. Ratcliffe reportedly believed that research in China caused the leak that resulted in one of the world’s deadliest pandemics.
“I’ve been on record as you know in saying I think our intelligence, our science and our common sense all really dictates that the origins of COVID was a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Ratcliffe told Breitbart, a news website, in an interview. “But the CIA has not made that assessment or at least not made that assessment publicly. So I’m going to focus on that and look at the intelligence and make sure that the public is aware that the agency is going to get off the sidelines.”
However, previous CIA Director Bill Burns, who served under Biden, encouraged analysts to determine an origin, and the CIA’s assessment was published before Donald Trump became president on January 20, 2025. The new assessment was made based on the CIA’s review of existing information on the pandemic. And the agency will continue to assess the origin.
A report from the Office of the Director of Intelligence in 2023 said that American intelligence agencies continue to take the stance that the virus was not the result of a biological weapon. All agencies are also certain the virus was not genetically engineered.
No one has determined a cause with any high confidence. Scientists have postulated that the virus happened naturally and spread from animals to humans at a Wuhan, China market in late 2019. Supporters of the theory of a lab leak believe the virus came from research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
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Rebecca Barnabi
