The Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, has concluded with "low confidence" that the COVID-19 pandemic is "more likely" to have originated from a laboratory incident rather than from natural transmission.
An agency spokesperson disclosed this on Saturday.
The CIA had, for years, maintained that it could not definitively determine whether the virus emerged from a lab or through natural means.
However, former CIA Director William Burns, in the final weeks of the Biden administration, urged analysts and scientists to make a clear assessment, citing the pandemic's historical importance, according to a senior U.S. official.
The CIA's latest evaluation does not dismiss the possibility of natural origins, stating that both scenarios remain plausible.
It is not clear if the CIA has obtained new intelligence to substantiate its findings or whether existing evidence was re-evaluated.
China's government, which has consistently denied the lab-leak theory, has accused the U.S. of politicizing the investigation into COVID-19's origins.
But the newly confirmed CIA Director John Ratcliffe stressed the importance of addressing the issue in a public assessment.
Speaking in an interview with Breitbart following his Senate confirmation on Friday, Ratcliffe stated, "I've been on record as you know in saying I think our intelligence, our science, and our common sense all really dictate that the origins of COVID was a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology."
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