US intelligence reveals important information about the origin of Corona

US intelligence reveals important information about the origin of Corona

 The CIA has concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic likely originated in a laboratory rather than in nature, a CIA spokesman said Saturday. The agency has said for years that it cannot conclude whether the pandemic was the result of an accident in a laboratory or originated in nature.

But a senior US official said that former CIA Director William Burns had asked analysts and scientists at the intelligence agency in the final weeks of the Joe Biden administration to make a clear decision on the matter, stressing the historical importance of the pandemic.

The agency said it had "low confidence" in its assessment that "the research origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is most likely." It noted in its statement that both possibilities - laboratory and natural - remain valid. The World Health Organization said in December that it was still waiting for full cooperation from China to clarify the origin of the coronavirus pandemic, five years after the first cases of the pneumonia were recorded in the city of Wuhan.

"This is a moral and scientific imperative. We continue to call on China to share and access data so we can understand the origins of COVID-19," the organization said in Geneva. "Without transparency, sharing and cooperation between countries, the world cannot adequately prevent and prepare for future epidemics and pandemics," the WHO warned.

Since the start of the pandemic, China has voiced concerns that it would be blamed for the global outbreak. Since then, the government and state media have mounted a massive public opinion campaign, focusing on the possibility that the virus may have come from abroad rather than from China. A joint committee of Chinese and WHO experts was not able to travel to Wuhan until 2021.

In its final report, the committee considered it “probable or highly probable” that the coronavirus originated in one species of wild animal, then passed to another species of animal before eventually spreading to humans. However, the origin and route of transmission remain unclear.