Biden asks US intel officials to investigate COVID-19 origin

US President Joe Biden asks US intelligence officials to “redouble” their efforts to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the possibility that the origins of the virus trace to a Chinese lab.

After months of minimizing the possibility as a fringe theory, the Biden administration is responding both to domestic and geopolitical concerns about putting pressure on China to be transparent about the outbreak.

Republicans, including former president Donald Trump, have promoted the theory that the virus emerged from a laboratory accident, rather than naturally through human contact with an infected animal.

Biden in a statement says the majority of the intelligence community had “coalesced” around those two likely scenarios but “do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other.” He reveals that two of the 18 intelligence agencies lean toward the animal link and “one leans more toward” the lab theory, adding, “each with low or moderate confidence.”