WASHINGTON: A new assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies about the origins of Covid-19 that was delivered Tuesday at the White House did not give a definitive conclusion on whether the new coronavirus jumped on humans naturally or through a lab leak, in part because of China’s lack of detailed information, said two senior U.S. officials.
The new assessment, which was ordered by President Biden 90 days ago, highlights the administration’s difficult challenge to snatch more information from Beijing that would shed light on how the global pandemic began.
Stresses the importance of inducing China to share laboratory records, genomic samples and other data that could provide additional insight into the origins of the virus, which has killed more than four million people worldwide, as reported by current and former officials.
“It was a deep dive, but you can only go as deep as the situation allows,” a U.S. official said. “If China doesn’t give access to certain data sets, you’ll never know.”
China has rejected U.S. and other efforts to provide this information, presenting the Biden administration with the same problem (how to convince Beijing to cooperate) that the Trump administration faced for nearly a year. The extensive effort to pressure China for more information, some details of which have not been previously reported, ended in struggles and bureaucratic failures.