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WASHINGTON — American intelligence agencies are unlikely to draw any firm conclusions about the origin of the new coronavirus without more information on the earliest cases from China or new scientific discoveries about the nature of the virus, according to a new US secret intelligence report. Friday.
President Biden instructed the country’s intelligence agencies in May conduct a 90-day investigation get to the root of the pandemic. When are the main findings of this review released in August, unable to provide a single answer, and instead reaffirmed the agencies’ long-held position: The theory that the virus occurred naturally and that it was created by chance in a lab was plausible.
But Friday’s report reiterated that the evidence supporting both conclusions is weak and that US intelligence agencies know very little about the origin of the virus. The intelligence community concluded that the virus was not developed as a biological weapon.
In the report, analysts “assess that a natural origin and a laboratory-related event are plausible hypotheses for how SARS-CoV-2 first infected humans.” “However, analysts disagree on which is more likely or whether an assessment can be made.”
The four intelligence agencies and the National Intelligence Council find the natural causes theory more plausible. One agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, supports the lab leak theory. But none of these agencies has provided the director of national intelligence or the White House with a highly credible assessment that demonstrates the continuing skepticism around the problem.
The intelligence community has generally concluded that the virus that causes Covid-19 was not deliberately designed in a laboratory. But even this conclusion is made with only low confidence. Some genetic engineering techniques make it difficult to identify modifications, especially given the current knowledge gaps about the diversity of naturally occurring coronaviruses.
“According to academic journal articles, some genetic engineering techniques can render genetically modified viruses indistinguishable from natural viruses,” the report said.
The intelligence report said that the Wuhan Institute of Virology has previously made chimeras or combinations of coronaviruses that do not occur in nature. But according to the report, this record offers little insight into whether the virus that causes Covid was genetically engineered.
Some Republican lawmakers confiscated the so-called gain-of-function study at the institute, arguing that it supports the lab leak theory. At a House Intelligence Committee session this week, Ohio Republican Representative Brad Wenstrup and a medical doctor called for further scrutiny of the institute’s work on creating the chimera.
“In this case, that means experimentally combining components of the two viruses into a single virus to make it more infectious for the general public,” said Mr Wenstrup, who called for more sessions on the origin of the pandemic. “I can’t be sure that Covid-19 was caused by a research-related accident or infection from a sampling trip, but I’m 100 percent sure it was a massive cover-up.”
National Institutes of Health Said the chimera experiments in Wuhan It was based on coronaviruses that had no ancestors of the virus that causes Covid.
There is broad consensus under the Biden administration that China has not shared everything it can about the origins of the epidemic. The intelligence report released Friday called for greater transparency by China and said Beijing should release more data on what it knows about and what it knows about possible intermediate species, the nature of early human infections, and possible intermediate strains the virus may infect before it spreads to humans. Research work of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
However, the report also made it clear that on some issues, the Chinese authorities were initially caught unprepared. Critically, American intelligence analysts assessed that Chinese officials were unaware of the existence of the new coronavirus until Covid was detected in the population and isolated by the Wuhan institute.
“Accordingly, if the pandemic was caused by a laboratory-related event, they were probably unaware that such an event occurred in the first months,” the report said.
The report also suggested that researchers from the Wuhan institute were unaware of the virus until the outbreak began, as they quickly began working on Covid as the epidemic worsened. The new report was based largely on the obvious surprise of Chinese authorities and researchers from the Wuhan institute as the pandemic worsened to support the theory of natural causes.
The wide variety of animals susceptible to the virus that causes Covid and the various forms of contact of people in China with these animals, including trafficking, farming, sales and rescue, enable natural transmission.
While no animal sources were found, “analysts assessing that the outbreak was caused by natural causes note that in many previous zoonotic outbreaks, animal sources have taken years to be identified, and in some cases animal sources have not been identified”. said report.
On the other hand, analysts supporting the lab leak theory did not find a smoking gun either. Instead, they stressed that previous coronavirus studies at the Wuhan institute were conducted under “inadequate biosecurity conditions that could lead to opportunities for a laboratory-related event.”
The report stated that some of the closest known relatives of the virus that causes Kovid are found in bats in Yunnan Province. Researchers who brought samples to Wuhan “could provide a plausible link between these habitats and the city.”
“These analysts state that it is reasonable that researchers may have inadvertently exposed themselves to the virus without sequencing during experiments or sampling activities, possibly resulting in asymptomatic or mild infection,” the report said.
However, scientists estimate that the viruses identified in Yunnan diverged from the ancestors of SARS-CoV-2 40 years ago. Other viruses found in Laos There is a much closer similarity in some of their genes, and scientists expect further research to reveal more closely related coronaviruses in bats.
Carl Zimmer contributing reporting.
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