The intelligence community is investigating whether COVID-19 originated through an accidental escape from a Wuhan lab or through a natural emergence, spy agency leaders confirmed, as they warned more broadly about the Chinese Communist Party’s influence efforts inside the United States.

Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, asked Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines about COVID-19’s origins during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on the worldwide threats assessment report, arguing, “We can’t conclude definitively that the virus that causes COVID-19 emerged naturally until there’s been a transmission chain that’s been identified, how the virus evolved and transmitted between species, and to date, no such path of zoonotic transmission has been definitively identified.” He asked if that was accurate, and the Biden spy chief confirmed the Wuhan lab was one of two main hypotheses.