CIA says Covid was likely leaked from Chinese lab

The CIA's new director John Ratcliffe made the claim over the weekend

A spokesperson said that a 'research-related origin' of the pandemic 'is more likely than a natural origin based on the available body of reporting'.

The decision to release that assessment marks one of the first made by the CIA's new director John Ratcliffe, appointed by Donald Trump, who took over the agency on Thursday.

Ratcliffe served as director of national intelligence during President Trump's first term and has long favoured the lab leak theory. The CIA director thinks Covid most likely came from a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The institute is a 40-minute drive from the Huanan wet market where the first cluster of infections emerged.

In an interview with Breitbart News published on Friday, Ratcliffe said he wanted the CIA to abandon its neutral stance on the origins of the outbreak.

He said: "One of the things that I've talked about a lot is addressing the threat from China on a number of fronts, and that goes back to why a million Americans died and why the Central Intelligence Agency has been sitting on the sidelines for five years in not making an assessment about the origins of Covid."

But officials told US media that the new assessment was not based on new intelligence and predates the Trump administration.

The review was reportedly ordered in the closing weeks of the Biden administration and completed before Trump took office on Monday.

However, the review is said to be based on 'low confidence' which means the supporting intelligence is deficient, inconclusive and contradictory.

Many scientists support the 'natural origin' theory while rejecting the lab leak hypothesis on the grounds of a lack of definitive evidence.

China has also dismissed the lab claim as 'political manipulation' by Washington.