WASHINGTON (Guardian) -- The virus that drove the Covid-19 pandemic most likely emerged from a laboratory leak but not as part of a weapons program, according to an updated and classified 2021 U.S. energy department study provided to the White House and senior American lawmakers, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The department’s finding – a departure from previous studies on how the virus emerged – came in an update to a document from the office of National Intelligence director Avril Haines, the WSJ reported. It follows a finding reportedly issued with “moderate confidence” by the FBI that the virus spread after leaking out of a Chinese laboratory.
Conflicting hypotheses on the origins of Covid-19 have centered either on an unidentified animal transmitting the virus to humans or its accidental leak from a Chinese research laboratory in Wuhan.
The spread of Covid-19, just one in a line of infectious coronoviruses to emerge, caught global health bodies unawares in early 2020. It has since caused close to 7 million deaths worldwide, according to the World Health Organization, and disrupted trade as well as travel.
Former U.S. president Donald Trump politicized the issue, calling it the “China virus”, triggering a racialization of a pandemic that his Democratic successor Joe Biden has sought to avoid. But political polarization remains under the surface of efforts to establish its origins.
The energy department’s updated findings run counter to reports by four other U.S. intelligence agencies that concluded the epidemic started as the result of natural transmission from an infected animal. Two agencies remain undecided.
U.S. officials, the Journal said, also declined to expand on new intelligence or analysis that led the energy department to change its position. They also noted that the energy department and FBI arrived at the same conclusion for different reasons.
The CIA remains undecided between leak and natural transmission theories, according to the National Intelligence Council study. But while the initial 2021 report did not reach a conclusion, it did offer a consensus view that Covid-19 was not part of a Chinese biological weapons program.
The National Security adviser, Jake Sullivan, acknowledged Sunday that there are a “variety of views” within U.S. intelligence agencies on the issue.
“Some elements of the intelligence community have reached conclusions on one side, some on the other, and a number have said they just don’t have enough information to be sure,” Sullivan told CNN.