The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) says that COVID-19 is more likely to have emerged from a lab than from nature or a wet market.
A CIA spokesperson told media outlets on January 25, 2025, that the agency’s analysts now favour the lab theory. While admitting the earlier origins theories remain valid, the analysts have looked closer at the conditions in the labs in Wuhan province before the pandemic outbreak.
In the dying days of the Biden administration, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan ordered a new review of the pandemic’s origin. As reported by the New York Times, as part of that review, the agency’s previous director, William J. Burns, told analysts that they needed to take a position on the origins of Covid. However, he was agnostic on which theory they should adopt.
John Ratcliffe, the new director of the CIA, has long favoured the lab leak hypothesis.
The agency made its new assessment with low confidence, meaning the intelligence behind it is fragmentary and incomplete.
“The CIA continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible,” the spokesperson said.
