COVID 'more likely' leaked from Chinese lab: CIA

WASHINGTON: The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on Saturday shifted its official stance on the origin of COVID-19, saying that it was "more likely" that the virus leaked from a Chinese lab than being transmitted by animals.

The new assessment came after John Ratcliffe on Thursday was confirmed the new director of CIA under the second White House administration of Donald Trump.

"The agency is going to get off the sidelines," Ratcliffe — who believes COVID-19 leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology — told outlet Breitbart.

Ratcliffe, who served as the director of national intelligence from 2020-2021 during Trump's first term, said in an interview published on Friday that a "day-one" priority would be making an assessment on COVID's origins.

"CIA assesses with low confidence that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin based on the available body of reporting," a CIA spokesperson said in a statement Saturday.

The agency had not previously made any determination on whether COVID had been unleashed by a laboratory mishap or spilled over from animals.

"CIA continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible," the spokesperson noted.

A US official told AFP the shift was based on a new analysis of existing intelligence ordered by previous CIA director William Burns, which was completed before Ratcliffe's arrival this week.

Some US agencies, like the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Energy, support the lab-leak theory, albeit with varying levels of confidence, while most elements of the intelligence community lean toward natural origins.

Proponents of the lab-leak hypothesis highlight that the earliest known COVID-19 cases emerged in Wuhan, China — a major coronavirus research hub — roughly 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) from the nearest bat populations carrying similar SARS-like viruses.