By Shannon Pettypiece - NBC News and Rebecca Shabad - NBC News
The president, Joe Biden, has indicated this Wednesday through a statement that he has asked the intelligence agencies to "redouble their efforts" to get to the bottom of the origin of the coronavirus, after a publicly known State Department report is week raised questions about whether it came from an animal, as most of the scientific community believes, or escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
The president assured that, however, the intelligence services
have not been able to reach a "definitive conclusion"
about the origins of COVID-19 and are divided on whether the virus came from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident.
"To date, the US intelligence community has rallied around
two likely scenarios
, but has not come to a definitive conclusion on this issue," Biden said, "I have asked you to redouble your efforts to collect and analyze the information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion, and that
you inform me in 90 days
.
The president said that in March he asked national security adviser Jake Sullivan to prepare a report for him on what was known about the origins of the virus.
Biden said the report concluded that while two of the intelligence agencies
"lean" on the explanation that the virus came from contact with animals
, another goes more for the laboratory explanation.
[A State Department report fuels doubts about the natural origin of the coronavirus in China]
Biden said that
each evaluation has "low or moderate confidence"
and that "most of the elements do not believe that there is enough information to evaluate one as more likely than the other."
Biden said he has asked for further investigation.
His comments come after a U.S. intelligence report said three laboratory workers in Wuhan, China
fell ill in November 2019
, before the first coronavirus cases were reported, adding to circumstantial evidence. from a hypothesis that the virus could have escaped from a laboratory in the city.
Investigation "transparent"
Just yesterday, the Biden government asked the World Health Organization (WHO) for a more in-depth investigation on this matter, after the first investigations, criticized for alleged interference from China, leaned by the hypothesis that the virus jumped to the human being from another animal species.
Anthony Fauci "is not convinced" of the natural origin of the coronavirus
May 24, 202100: 31
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra told a WHO ministerial meeting that there must be a
"transparent" follow-up investigation
to understand the current pandemic and prepare for "future biological threats."
[CDC Investigates Rare Cases of Myocarditis in COVID-19 Vaccinated Youth]
The new phase of research on the early days of the pandemic "must be launched with transparent terms of reference, based on science and that give international experts the independence necessary to fully assess the origin of the virus and the early days of the virus. outbreak, "he said.
Scientists and public health experts have said since last year that the virus likely
emerged after being contracted from an animal
, a common occurrence in nature.
Some, however, wonder if the virus somehow escaped from a Wuhan laboratory.
When asked for their opinion on the origin of the virus at a briefing at the White House on Tuesday, senior health officials did not rule out an unnatural cause.
"Many of us think that it
is more likely to be a natural event
, such as SARS-CoV-1, in which it passes from an animal reservoir to a human," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the Institute. National Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
"But we don't know 100% the answer to that."
[Watch the Lakers or win a student scholarship: incentives for those vaccinated against COVID-19]
He added that since it is an
ongoing
issue, it is "imperative" that the World Health Organization
launch another investigation.
Discovering the truth is a priority
Andy Slavitt, senior adviser to the White House for the response to COVID-19, agreed that it is a "critical priority" for the United States to discover the truth.
"Extremely unlikely" that the coronavirus was spread by a laboratory leak, according to study
March 29, 202101: 18
"Our position is that
we have to get to the bottom of this
, and we need a completely transparent process from China; we need WHO to help us on this matter," he said.
"We don't feel like we have that now."
An initial investigation carried out jointly by the WHO and China determined that the coronavirus likely arose in bats and spread to an intermediary animal before reaching humans.
He also said that it is "extremely unlikely" that the virus leaked from a laboratory in China.
[Only 18.9% of Latinos in the United States have been vaccinated against COVID-19]
However, the report has been plagued by questions about China's transparency and willingness to cooperate and the
investigators' lack of independence
.
The investigation was limited because it relied on access dictated by the Chinese government, and many of the Chinese scientists involved were affiliated with state institutions, critics said.