A newly declassified report by the Director of National Intelligence revealed the US intelligence community found that no incident that would have prompted the COVID-19 pandemic occurred at China's Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
The Friday-released report outlined that while WIV officials conducted extensive research on a variety of coronaviruses, there is "no indication" the facility ever had samples of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 "or a close progenitor."
The findings specifically stated that there were no signs of "any direct evidence that a specific research-related incident occurred involving WIV personnel before the pandemic that could have caused the COVID pandemic."
It was further detailed in the declassified report that there was no evidence to suggest the WIV carried out any "genetic engineering work" with the COVID-19 virus, and that all intelligence agencies determined "SARS-CoV-2 was not developed as a biological weapon."
"Information available to the [intelligence community] indicates that some of the research conducted by the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] and WIV included work with several viruses, including coronaviruses, but no known viruses that could plausibly be a progenitor of SARS-CoV-2," the report stated, acknowledging that the WIV was independent of the PLA but occasionally worked in conjunction.
The National Intelligence Council and four other intel agencies concluded SARS-CoV-2 "most likely was caused by natural exposure to an infected animal," adding that the WIV did not have a sample of the virus until late December 2019.
According to the DNI report, the CIA and company were effectively "unable to determine the precise origin" of the outbreak. Additionally, it was noted there were no signs any of the WIV researchers were hospitalized for COVID symptoms.
The report, however, did not specifically look into whether the virus emerged at other facilities in Wuhan, or analyze the merits of hypotheses that it emerged from a lab leak or from natural causes.
Since the report's release, Republicans have come forward to condemn its findings and the government's lack of transparency. Both the Republican chairs of the House Intelligence Committee and the subcommittee on the pandemic voiced their earlier findings that backed the lab leak claims.