CIA changes theory of Covid origin: report

The Central Intelligence Agency said that Covid-19 likely originated from a lab leak in China in a statement on Saturday, just days after director John Ratcliffe was sworn in from a previously neutral position. has happened, multiple outlets have reported.

“The CIA assesses with low confidence that a research-related source of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural source based on the available body of reports,” a CIA spokesperson shared in a statement to NBC News.

“The CIA continues to assess that both research-related and natural sources of the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible.”

Ratcliffe said he supported theories that the virus was developed at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology before his new post.

“I’ve been on the record, as you know, I think our intelligence, our science and our common sense all really indicate that the source of Covid was a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Ratcliffe, a former director of the National Intelligence Agency, told Breitbart on Thursday.

“But the CIA didn’t make that assessment, or at least didn’t make that assessment publicly. So I’m going to focus on that and look at the intelligence and make sure the public is aware that the agency is going to step aside.”

President Trump has previously referred to COVID-19 as the “China virus” in tweets and supported similar rhetoric.

China has denied all links to deliberately creating the virus, but intelligence officials are still unaware of its origin.

“As President Trump confronts [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping]He needs to be equipped with very good intelligence and be able to talk about China in such a way that if they kill or contribute to a million Americans, the president needs to be armed with that,” Ratcliffe said in a Breitbart interview.

Some scientists believe that COVID-19 could have evolved naturally, unlike the lab leak theory.