US National Security Adviser Says Definitive Answer on COVID-19 Origin Still Elusive

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday there was still no definitive answer about the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic after the US Energy Department claimed in a classified report that the virus came from a laboratory leak in Wuhan.

The secret document, less than five pages in length, was provided to the White House and select Congress members as an update to a 2021 intelligence report, which said the Energy Department was undecided about the virus's origin, American media reported on Friday.

The Energy Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation now suggested that the outbreak resulted from a mishap in a lab in Wuhan, which the media says is the center of China's coronavirus research.

Four other federal US agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, are said to believe that the new coronavirus stems from natural transmission, while the Central Intelligence Agency and another agency that officials declined to identify remain undecided.

The Energy Department made the judgment with "low confidence," the media quoted people who read the report as saying. The conclusion is reportedly based on new intelligence, which US officials who talked to the daily refused to elaborate on. The update also reaffirmed the agency's belief that COVID-19 was not the result of a Chinese bio weapons program.

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan confirmed, in an interview with CNN, that the US intelligence community remained split about the virus's origin, with some agencies siding with the natural transmission theory and others with the lab leak, while still others were undecided.

"If we gain any further insider information we will share it with Congress and we will share it with the American people, but right now there is not a definitive answer that has emerged from the intelligence community on this matter," he said.

The 2021 US intelligence report concluded that the virus first circulated in Wuhan no later than November 2019. The scientific and political community in the United States has been arguing since then about whether it escaped from a lab or emerged naturally and jumped from an infected animal to a human.

China has repeatedly lashed back against suggestions that its biological research program could have been the origin of the outbreak, which has claimed millions of lives globally since the World Health Organization declared a pandemic in March 2020.