WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden said Friday that China held “important information” at the origin of Covid-19 after the US intelligence community said it did not believe the virus was bioweapon – but still split from the laboratory.
However, the United States does not believe Chinese officials have knowledge of the virus before the initial plague of pandemics who have now claimed 4.5 million lives, according to a summary that was not classified from the waiting intelligence report.
“Important information about the origin of this Pandemi is in the People’s Republic of China, but from the beginning, government officials in China have worked to prevent international investigators and members of the global public health community to access them,” Biden said in a statement.
“Until today, the PRC continues to reject the call for transparency and resist information, even when victims of this pandemic continue to increase.” US intelligence has ruled out that Coronavirus was developed as a weapon, and most institutions assessed that “low trust” was not genetically engineered.
But the community is still divided into the origins of the pathogens, with four institutions and the National Intelligence Board considers supporting natural exposure to animals as possible explanations, and one institution that supports laboratory leak theory.
Analysts on three agents cannot reach conclusions.
“Variations in analytic display are mostly from differences in how institutions that weigh on the reporting of intelligence and scientific publications, and intelligence and scientific gap,” said summary.
The intelligence community and global scientists do not have clinical samples or epidemiological data from the earliest Covid-19 case, he added.
Biden said the United States will continue to work with allies to pressure Beijing to share more information and work with the World Health Organization.
“We must have full and transparent accounting from this global tragedy.
Not less acceptable,” he said.
The office of the National Intelligence Director said he was reviewing parts of the report in the near future, given the historical nature of the pandemic and the importance of telling the public, all while protecting the source and method.
Beijing has rejected calls from the United States and other countries for a new investigation of origin after a very politicized visit by the World Health Organization Team in January also proved to be inconclusive, and faced criticism for lack of transparency and access.
At the beginning of the pandemic, a natural origin hypothesis – that the virus appears in bats and then forwarded to humans, possibly through intermediary species – widely accepted.
Then, as time goes by and scientists cannot find a virus in both bats or other animals that match the genetic signature of the SARS-COV-2, the researchers say they are more open to consider leaks involving the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which conducts Coronavirus research Bat.
However, scientific papers recently tilted the debate towards zoonotic origin.
Researchers in China and Glasgow University published a paper in the journal Science who found “animal-to-human transmission related to infected living animals is the most likely cause of Covid-19 pandemic.” In addition, a paper with 21 top virologists in the Cell Journal that continues to conclude: “There is currently no evidence that SARS-COV-2 has a laboratory origin.”