Biden still suspects China of hiding the origins of COVID-19
US intelligence agencies concluded that COVID-19 was not a biological weapon. The report on the origin of the coronavirus pandemic, prepared by order of President Biden, could not establish the exact causes of this phenomenon.
Photo: pixabay.com
A report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in response to a request from Joe Biden says that a satisfactory answer to the question of how the virus that killed 4.6 million people worldwide arose remains unattainable, writes The Guardian.
In May, US President Biden instructed the United States intelligence community to check all versions of the spread of COVID-19, including mutations in the natural transmission of the virus from animal to human and the hypothesis of a laboratory leak of the virus in China.
The other day, the special services presented President Biden with a secret report on the results of their investigation, but representatives of the US intelligence agencies did not come to any consensus in favor of one version or another.
“Having studied all available intelligence data and other information, the intelligence community still cannot come to an unambiguous conclusion about the most likely causes of the origin of COVID-19,” the declassified description of the report published on the website of the Director of National Intelligence of the United States says. “All agencies consider two theories likely: natural transmission to an infected animal and an incident related to the laboratory.”
From the very beginning of the pandemic, the scientific world considered the mainstream version about the natural origin of the coronavirus through transmission from animal to human and the mutations that the SARS-CoV-2 virus could undergo when it got into a new environment for it.
At the same time, the BBC reminds, coronaviruses living in the organisms of bats were considered the most likely candidates. This version was also supported by the fact that many of the first known cases at the end of 2019 were associated with a market in Wuhan, where wild animals were sold. However, scientists have not been able to accurately reconstruct the evolution of the virus. In addition, there was evidence that not all of the first cases were related to the Wuhan market.
The report of the US special services contains some suggestions about how the coronavirus could have appeared and spread among people. According to the special services, the initial infection probably occurred no later than November 2019, and the first known outbreak of the disease occurred in Wuhan in December of the year before last.
“We believe that the virus was not developed as a biological weapon,” the report of the US intelligence agencies states. – Most agencies also conclude with a low degree of confidence that SARS-CoV-2, in all probability, was not the result of genetic engineering. However, the two agencies believe that there is insufficient evidence to confirm or refute this claim.”
The conclusion of the American intelligence services that the Chinese authorities “did not have knowledge about the virus before the initial outbreak” of the coronavirus also speaks against the version about the artificial origin of COVID-19.
Nevertheless, as you know, even at the initial phase of the investigation, it was known that the views of the American special services on the origin of COVID-19 differ. This disagreement was also reflected in the report, which cites the opinion of one of the agencies belonging to the intelligence community, which “concludes with a moderate degree of confidence that the first human infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus was most likely the result of an incident related to the laboratory.”
Representatives of this agency, unnamed in the report, believe that such a laboratory incident “was probably related to experiments, the treatment of animals or the collection of samples at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
As the BBC reminds, according to information collected by the US State Department under the Trump administration and published in January 2020, the Wuhan Institute of Virology maintains secret ties with the People’s Liberation Army of China, and several of its employees went to the hospital in November 2019 with symptoms similar to both the flu and COVID.
American intelligence agencies explain their uncertainty about the origin of the coronavirus by the fact that the Chinese side does not provide all the information that would help make the situation more definite. In particular, the special services have no information about the first cases of COVID-19 and their possible connection with certain locations or employees of any institutions.
“Beijing,” the US intelligence report says, ” continues to resist the international investigation, does not want to share information and places the blame on other countries, including the United States. These actions partly indicate the uncertainty of the Chinese authorities themselves about where this investigation can lead. It also indicates dissatisfaction with the fact that the international community is using this issue to exert political pressure on China.”
The President of the United States, Joe Biden, said on Friday evening that China has ” critical information about the origin of the pandemic.” “But from the very beginning, government officials in China have tried in every possible way to protect this information from international investigators and representatives of the global health community,” the head of the White House said in a statement.
“The world deserves answers, and I will not rest until we get them,” the American president added.
Biden promises that the investigation will continue: “Although this review has been completed, our efforts to find out the origins of this pandemic will not stop. We will do everything possible to trace the roots of this outbreak, which has caused so much pain and death around the world, so that we can take all necessary precautions to prevent its recurrence.”
Once again, the target of Biden’s criticism was China, which, according to him, “to this day continues to reject calls for transparency and withhold information, even though the number of victims of this pandemic continues to grow.”
The United States, Biden promised, will continue to put pressure on China “to adhere to scientific norms and standards, including the exchange of information and data from the very first days of the pandemic, protocols related to biosafety, and information from animal populations. We must have a full and transparent report on this global tragedy. Nothing less is acceptable.”
Recall that a group of experts from the World Health Organization visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology in February 2020, but their visit was under the vigilant control of the Chinese authorities, and foreign scientists themselves soon said that they did not see everything they would like.
In China itself, the authorities and the media refute the theory about the COVID-19 leak from the laboratory in Wuhan, and put forward theories, including that the coronavirus escaped from the American laboratory in Fort Detrick, Maryland, in 2019.