The US intelligence community acknowledged Thursday that its agencies have two theories about where Covid-19 originated, with two agencies believing it naturally originated from human contact with infected animals, and a third adopting the possibility of a lab accident as a source of the global pandemic.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) said: «The American intelligence community does not know exactly where, when, or how the Covid-19 virus was initially transmitted, but it has met around two possible scenarios,» adding that the majority believe there is «not enough information to assess the likelihood.» One of them is more likely than the other. «
The ODNI statement did not specify which two of the 17 agencies that make up the US intelligence community believe the virus originated from infected animals and which agency believes it originated from a lab accident.
However, in both cases, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that agencies that turned to one explanation or another did so with «low or moderate confidence» – which in espionage language they mean that they believe the evidence supporting their view is far from conclusive.
Officials refused to discuss agencies that had expressed initial opinions about the source of the virus, but stressed that the vast majority of US agencies believed that the information was insufficient to determine that one scenario of the origin of the virus was more likely than the other.