The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has revised its position on the origins of COVID-19, stating on Saturday that the virus is “more likely” to have originated from a Chinese laboratory than through animal transmission.
The announcement follows the confirmation of John Ratcliffe as CIA director under President Donald Trump’s second term. Ratcliffe, who previously served as the director of national intelligence during Trump’s first administration, made assessing COVID-19’s origins a “day-one” priority.
“The agency is going to get off the sidelines,” Ratcliffe said in an interview with Breitbart on Friday. He has long supported the theory that the virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a research facility in the Chinese city where the first known cases of COVID-19 were reported.
A CIA spokesperson confirmed the agency’s updated assessment, noting, “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.”
This marks a significant shift in the agency’s stance, as it had previously refrained from determining whether the virus resulted from a laboratory mishap or naturally spilled over from animals.
The spokesperson also emphasized that both the lab-leak and natural origin scenarios remain plausible, highlighting the lack of definitive evidence for either hypothesis.
New Analysis Sparks Policy Change
A U.S. official revealed that the CIA’s updated position stems from a fresh analysis of existing intelligence ordered by former CIA Director William Burns. The analysis was completed before Ratcliffe assumed his new role this week.
The lab-leak theory has gained traction among some U.S. agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Energy, which support the hypothesis with varying levels of confidence. However, the majority of the U.S. intelligence community continues to favor the natural origin theory.
Proponents of the lab-leak theory argue that the virus’s emergence in Wuhan, a hub for coronavirus research, raises questions, especially given the city’s distance of approximately 1,600 kilometers from bat populations carrying similar viruses.
The debate over COVID-19’s origins remains deeply polarized, with implications for global public health, international relations, and policy decisions. The CIA’s revised stance may further intensify calls for transparency and a more thorough investigation into the pandemic’s beginnings.
