Assessment on COVID-19 Origins

Assessment on COVID-19 Origins is a 2021 United States intelligence report, which was commissioned in May 2021 by President Joe Biden and declassified in August of the same year. Biden initially ordered his intelligence services to "redouble efforts" concerning the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The report was submitted to Biden on August 24, following a 90-day investigation, and an unclassified summary was made public three days later.

Background
Since the initial outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, the U.S. federal government under the Trump administration had been pushing for an investigation into a possible artificial origin of the disease. Both then-President Donald Trump and then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had claimed that there was "enormous evidence" regarding a lab leak from the Wuhan institute, even when U.S. intelligence officials contradicted their claims.

In February 2021, following a Wuhan mission conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO), President Biden's National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan publicly demanded transparency from the Chinese government and the WHO in their investigation process, saying:"'We have deep concerns about the way in which the early findings of the COVID-19 investigation were communicated and questions about the process used to reach them. It is imperative that this report be independent, with expert findings free from intervention or alteration by the Chinese government. To better understand this pandemic and prepare for the next one, China must make available its data from the earliest days of the outbreak.'"

Contents
A summary of the report was made public and published on the official website of the Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, on August 27, 2021. The rest is classified, and its contents are unknown to the general public.

The summary states that SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, "probably emerged and infected humans through an initial small-scale exposure that occurred no later than November 2019 with the first known cluster of COVID-19 cases arising in Wuhan, China in December".


 * Four intelligence agencies, as well as the National Intelligence Council, assessed "with low confidence" that the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection was most likely caused by natural exposure to an infected animal or a "close progenitor virus" (a virus which would likely be over 99% similar to SARS-CoV-2).
 * Another agency assessed "with moderate confidence" that the first human infection was most likely the result of a laboratory incident, likely involving experimentation, animal handling or sampling in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
 * Three other agencies remained unable to agree on either hypothesis without additional evidence, with some "favoring natural origin, others a laboratory origin, and some seeing the hypotheses as equally likely."
 * Variations in analytical views were largely a result of differences in the way agencies have studied intelligence reports and scientific publications, as well as intelligence and scientific gaps.

The report said that "China’s cooperation most likely would be needed to reach a conclusive assessment" on COVID-19 origins, and criticized the Chinese government for continuing to "hinder the global investigation" and refusing to share information. It also stated that China's actions reflected the government's own uncertainty about where an investigation could lead, as well as its frustrations that the international community was "using the issue to exert political pressure on China".

Reactions
Analysts have considered that the investigation proved incapable of deciding the question on the origins of COVID-19.

On August 27, President Biden released a statement in which he praised "the thorough, careful, and objective work of our intelligence professionals," while also accusing the government of China of blocking access to international experts, and continuing "to reject calls for transparency and withhold information".

Chinese officials and state media criticized the report, claiming that China was made a "scapegoat" in the investigation. Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu expressed his disapproval, saying that "without providing any evidence", the United States planned to use "origins tracing to shift blame onto China and spread the political virus", adding that "over 25 million Chinese netizens have signed an open letter asking for an inquiry into the Fort Detrick base". Fu Cong, a director-general at the Chinese Foreign Ministry, warned that "if they [the United States] baselessly accuse China, they better be prepared to accept the counterattack from China."