The CIA, which is the United States’ spy agency, has said that it believes COVID-19 is “more likely” to have started in a laboratory instead of coming from animals in nature. For a long time, the CIA was unsure about where the virus came from, and they couldn’t make a final decision. However, in the last months of President Biden’s first term, former CIA Director William Burns asked the agency’s scientists and experts to take a close look and come up with a clear answer, because the pandemic was such an important event in history.
The CIA still says they aren’t very sure about their conclusion. They say they have “low confidence” in their belief that the virus came from a lab, but they think it’s more likely than the idea that the virus came from nature. Even though they lean towards a lab origin, they also say both possibilities — the lab or nature — are still possible.
The Chinese government, which is being looked at closely for the source of the virus, says that it has been helping with investigations and believes that the idea of the virus coming from a lab isn’t true. China has also said that it feels the United States is using the question of the virus’s origin for political reasons, meaning they think the US is trying to make China look bad.
After being confirmed as CIA Director in January, John Ratcliffe said one of his main jobs was to get the CIA to share their findings about the virus’s origin. He has said before that he believes the virus most likely came from a leak at a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
