Two years into the COVID pandemic, China is still preventing international investigators from uncovering the truth about the source of the coronavirus.
China remains steadfast in preventing foreign investigators in determining the true origins of the coronavirus and has falsely accused the U.S. of starting the COVID pandemic. These are the conclusions drawn by the annual threat assessment from the office of U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines this week.
"Beijing continues to hinder the global investigation, resist sharing information, and blame other countries, including the United States" for the COVID pandemic that has now taken the lives of up to six million people globally, an unclassified threat assessment report that was made public on Tuesday revealed, the Washington Times reported.
According to the report, U.S. intelligence agencies are continuing their investigation into the origins of COVID, but are still divided on the issue. The report also failed to determine the true origin of the COVID outbreak in Wuhan, China around two years ago.
"The [intelligence community] assesses that the virus probably emerged and infected humans through an initial small-scale exposure that occurred no later than November 2019," the report revealed. It added that all U.S. intelligence agencies believe that COVID likely originated from either a natural exposure to an infected animal or a "laboratory-associated incident." The lab leak theory has long been criticized by the Chinese government, but pushed by several Republican leaders in the U.S.
Now, the DNI's National Intelligence Council together with four other intelligence agencies said "with low confidence" that the first human infection of COVID caused by SARS-CoV-2 likely occurred through a natural exposure to an animal "infected with it or a close progenitor virus - a virus that probably would be more than 99% similar to SARS-CoV-2."
However, one intelligence agency said with "moderate confidence" that the "the first human infection with SARS-CoV-2 most likely was the result of a laboratory-associated incident, probably involving experimentation, animal handling or sampling by the Wuhan Institute of Virology" in China.
This year, a Review Conference of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention is set to take place and intelligence agencies believe that this propaganda will be amplified by three nations during the event. The report added, "Rapid advances in dual-use technology, including bioinformatics, synthetic biology and genomic editing, could enable development of novel biological weapons that complicate detection, attribution and treatment."
U.S. officials have long suspected China of secretly developing biological weapons genetically designed to attack specific ethnic groups. The Chinese government initially refused to turn over early samples of COVID and did not provide records of dangerous virus research in the Wuhan lab.
Earlier this month, a team of international scientists at the University of California in San Diego released two extensive research papers that claimed COVID originated at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, Fox 5 San Diego reported.Jonathan Pekar, a doctoral student studying at UCSD said that data showed that COVID "centered on the market" and not in the Wuhan lab as many have suspected. The papers have yet to be peer-reviewed.
Meanwhile, the Daily Mail reported that two scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology claimed that "devastating pandemics can occur" at facilities such as the Chinese lab that houses dangerous viruses. In a 2,000-word article published in a scientific journal, two professors at the Wuhan lab in question outlined several recommendations to help avoid spillovers of dangerous viruses.
WIV virologists Professors Han Xia and Zhiming Yuan warned in the paper that biological threats, whether natural "or accidentally or deliberately released" can "endanger lives and disrupt economies worldwide."
