Intelligence officials reportedly told the White House there is a collection of unexamined evidence regarding the origins of the novel coronavirus that requires additional computer analysis.
This revelation preceded President Joe Biden’s call on Wednesday for members of the U.S. intelligence community to “redouble their efforts” and bring him information that could help bring an end to the mystery in 90 days, senior administration officials told the New York Times.
These same officials, the report noted, would not describe the evidence or what kind of computational analysis is being considered.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the White House for comment.
The first cases of COVID-19 were reported in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, and there have been more than 3.5 million deaths around the world attributed to the virus since then, according to Johns Hopkins University.
BIDEN ADMINISTRATION ENDED TRUMP-ERA STATE DEPARTMENT TEAM’S INVESTIGATION INTO COVID-19 ORIGINS
There has been much debate about the origins of COVID-19.
Biden said in his announcement on Wednesday that in March he ordered his national security adviser to task the intelligence community with preparing a report on its most “up-to-date analysis of the origins of COVID-19, including whether it emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident.”
The president said he received that report earlier this month before requesting a follow-up.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“As of today, the U.S. Intelligence Community has ‘coalesced around two likely scenarios’ but has not reached a definitive conclusion on this question,” he said. “Here is their current position: ‘While two elements in the IC leans toward the former scenario and one leans more toward the latter — each with low or moderate confidence — the majority of elements do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other.'”
Both the Trump and Biden administrations have cast doubt on the manner in which the study from China and the World Health Organization was conducted in early 2021. Though the WHO-China report said a jump from animals to humans was most likely, Trump officials, Republican leaders, and a number of scientists have pointed to an accidental escape from the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a highly plausible origin for the pandemic.
“The IC continues to examine all available evidence, consider different perspectives, and aggressively collect and analyze new information to identify the virus’s origins,” said Amanda Schoch, assistant director of National Intelligence for Strategic Communications, said in a statement Thursday.
