The CIA now believes the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic likely originated from a laboratory, according to an assessment released Saturday that points the finger at China even while acknowledging that the spy agency has “low confidence” in its own conclusion.
“CIA continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible,” a spokesperson for the agency wrote in a statement about the agency's assessment.
The nuanced finding suggests the agency believes the totality of evidence makes a lab origin more likely than a natural origin.
Instead of new evidence, the conclusion was based on fresh analyses of intelligence about the spread of the virus, its scientific properties and the work and conditions of China's virology labs.
But the agency's assessment assigns a low degree of confidence to this conclusion, suggesting the evidence is deficient, inconclusive or contradictory.
