US intelligence could not resolve the controversy over the origins of Covid – declassified report | Biden administration

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US officials said in a declassified summary on Friday that the US intelligence community had failed to resolve the heated debate within the Biden administration over whether a Chinese lab accident was the source of Covid-19.

The report, released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in response to Joe Biden’s request, said a satisfactory answer to the question of how a virus began that has killed 4.6 million people worldwide remains elusive.

According to Johns Hopkins University, more than 633,000 people have died in the United States, out of more than 38 million cases.

On Friday, US authorities said 3,668,38484 doses of COVID-19 vaccines had been administered, and 437,567285 doses had been distributed. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said 203,475,192 people received at least one shot while 172,646,952 people were fully vaccinated.

In a statement, Biden said: “Important information about the origins of this epidemic exists in the People’s Republic of China, but from the start, government officials in China have worked to prevent access to it by international investigators and members of the global public health community.”

“The world deserves answers, and I won’t rest until we get them,” he added.

Organizations within the US intelligence community have differed over the origins of the novel coronavirus.

Many believe it arose from “natural exposure to an infected animal or a virus close to it,” according to the abstract. But they had only “low confidence” in this conclusion. Other groups were not able to come to a firm opinion.

A segment of the intelligence community has developed “moderate confidence” that the first human infection with Covid may have been due to a “lab-related incident, possibly involving experimentation, animal handling or sampling by the Wuhan Institute of Virology”.

The report concluded that analysts would not be able to provide a “more definitive interpretation” without new information from China, such as clinical samples and epidemiological data on early cases.

China has ridiculed the theory that Covid-19 escaped from a lab in Wuhan and has pushed theories including that it emerged from a lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland, in 2019.

“While this review is over, our efforts to understand the origins of this pandemic will not stop,” Biden said. once again “.

He added, “To this day, [China] He continues to reject calls for transparency and withholding information, even as the toll from this pandemic continues to rise. We needed this information quickly, from [China], while the epidemic was still new.”

Biden said his administration has “renewed US leadership at the World Health Organization and mobilized allies and partners to refocus on this critical issue.

“The world deserves answers, and I won’t rest until we have them. Responsible nations do not shirk these kinds of responsibilities to the rest of the world. Epidemics do not respect international borders, and we must all better understand how Covid-19 emerged in order to prevent further pandemics” .

Biden said the United States would “keep up the pressure.” [China] To adhere to scientific rules and standards, including sharing information and data from the early days of the epidemic, protocols regarding biosafety, and information from animal populations. We must have a full and transparent account of this global tragedy. Nothing less is acceptable.”

The CDC’s tally of US vaccines against Covid-19 included two-dose vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, as well as the single-dose vaccine from Johnson & Johnson.

About 732,000 people have received an extra dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine since August 13, when the United States allowed a third dose of the vaccines for people with weakened immune systems who would likely have weaker protection from the two-dose regimens.

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