Declassified Report Finds No Evidence of COVID-19 Originating in Wuhan Lab

The head of the U.S. intelligence community has released a declassified report which found no evidence to support the claims that the COVID-19 virus was created in the Chinese government's Wuhan research lab. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) report was compiled by the U.S. intelligence community (IC), including the NSA, CIA, and FBI, and it was made for Congress.

It found that while some scientists at the Wuhan lab had done genetic engineering of coronaviruses, none of those viruses were closely related to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The report also dismissed allegations that the virus was created as a bioweapon by the People's Liberation Army, saying there was no evidence to support this claim. 

It also said that there was no evidence to suggest that three scientists at the lab were the first to be infected with COVID-19, as some had speculated. The report noted that U.S. intelligence found that several Wuhan researchers had become "mildly" ill in the Fall of 2019, with some symptoms consistent with COVID-19. However, it said that it was not known if the researchers had handled live viruses in their work, and the IC cannot determine whether the pandemic originates from a natural occurrence or a lab leak. Overall, the ODNI report found that there was no evidence to suggest COVID-19 was created in the Wuhan lab or that it originated from a lab leak, though the IC cannot confirm whether the virus was the result of a natural occurrence or not. Therefore, it is still uncertain exactly where the virus came from.