Wuhan: Investigators were hospitalized in November 2019

The relevant dates of the first year of the pandemic 1:16

(CNN) -

A US intelligence report found that several researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China fell ill in November 2019 and had to be hospitalized, a new detail about the severity of their symptoms that could fuel debate about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, according to two people with knowledge of the intelligence report.

A State Department fact sheet released by the Trump administration in January said investigators fell ill in the fall of 2019, but stopped short of saying they had been hospitalized.

China informed the World Health Organization that the first patient with symptoms similar to covid-19 was registered in Wuhan on December 8, 2019.

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The Wall Street Journal reported for the first time on the intelligence report on the previous hospitalizations.

What was the origin of the virus?

Importantly, the intelligence community does not yet know what the researchers' illness was, the people briefed said, and continues to have little confidence in their assessments of the precise origins of the virus beyond the fact that it comes from China.

"At the end of the day, there is still nothing definitive," said one of the people who has seen the intelligence information.

National Intelligence Director Avril Haines told lawmakers during the Global Threat Hearing last month that "the intelligence community does not know exactly where, when or how the covid-19 virus was initially transmitted," an assessment that has not changed, said two of the people briefed on the intelligence information.

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Current intelligence information reinforces the belief that the virus likely originated naturally, from animal-human contact, the sources said.

But that does not exclude the possibility that the virus was the result of an accidental leak from the Wuhan Institute, where research on the coronavirus in bats was being carried out.

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The WHO report

The World Health Organization conducted an investigation into the origins of the pandemic and concluded in a report that the risk of an accident was "extremely low."

The report said that "there were no reports of covid-19 compatible respiratory diseases during the weeks / months leading up to December 2019, and there was no serological evidence of infection in workers through specific serological tests for SARS-CoV-2" .

Disease ecologist Peter Daszak, who worked on the WHO team, told CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta in February that "there's really no evidence yet that this comes from a laboratory."

He noted that the researchers were evaluated and no evidence of covid-19 antibodies was found, and said the lab was "very well run."

What the WHO found in a virology laboratory in Wuhan 4:08

"That hypothesis is not completely ruled out," Daszak said.

"It is a conclusion that is extremely unlikely and that there is a much more likely hypothesis."

But the WHO research was quickly criticized by the United States, United Kingdom and other governments for its limited access to "complete original data and samples."

The organization was also accused of being too deferential to China during the course of the study, of which 17 Chinese scientists were co-authors, several of them from state institutions.

US Research

Members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which has long been investigating the origins of the pandemic, received a classified report on the matter last week, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The source declined to say whether the intelligence report mentioning the hospitalized investigators was discussed during the briefing.

Current and former intelligence officials say the idea that the virus was accidentally released from the laboratory in Wuhan is reasonable, although they caution that there is no high-confidence assessment of that possibility.

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In the final days of the Trump administration, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo leaned on the possibility that the virus was leaking from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or WIV.

Despite intelligence information being inconclusive, Pompeo released a fact sheet saying the US had evidence that WIV researchers had been ill in the fall of 2019 with symptoms similar to covid-19 and that the lab, where the coronavirus had been studied in bats, had a troubled history with military research.

The process to declassify the intelligence in that fact sheet took a long time and certain details were removed from the final version that was released, sources familiar with the process told CNN.

In contrast, the Biden administration has not declassified any intelligence information on the origins of Covid-19 and has not indicated that it plans to do so.

The Wuhan Laboratory

One of the challenges in developing any certainty is access to the laboratory itself.

China delayed access to international investigators for months after the initial outbreak, virtually guaranteeing that the lab was thoroughly cleaned before any forensic analysis could be performed, and investigators were also not allowed to view the original data records. that, according to the scientists, would be fundamental to understand the origins of the virus.

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A key way to find an answer would be to run genetic sequencing on the original samples that the Wuhan lab staff were working on.

But "the Chinese will never allow that," said a person familiar with the underlying intelligence.

"My personal belief is that we will never know the answer to this," said this source.

"And the CIA is not going to find the answer, because that would suggest that the Chinese are looking for it themselves," which this person said does not happen.

"If the answer exists, they will not find it through traditional espionage," added this person.

Wuhan