The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has said the virus was “not manmade or genetically modified”.
US President Donald Trump indicated that he has seen evidence that the coronavirus outbreak originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
This was refuted by the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who indicated he had not seen definitive evidence.
“We don’t know precisely where it began,” he said.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a statement on Thursday that it had concluded that the virus was “not manmade or genetically modified”, but said it was still examining whether the origins of the pandemic could be traced to contact with infected animals or an accident at a Chinese lab.
Trump was responding to a question about whether he has seen anything to date that gives him a “high degree of confidence” that the virus originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“Yes, I have,” Trump said, before telling the World Health Organisation they “should be ashamed of themselves” for being like “the public relations agency for China”.
He was asked by Fox News reporter John Roberts whether he had seen conclusive evidence to back up this assertion, to which he replied: “You’re talking about the virus and where it came from?”
Roberts confirmed this is what he was talking about.
“No, we’re going to see where it is,” Trump said. “We’re going to see where it comes from.
“And you know, look, you know every theory. You had the theory from the lab, you had the theory from many different — the bats, the type of bat, and the bat is 40 miles away, so it couldn’t have been here and it couldn’t have been there, and we have a — there’s a lot of theories.
“But, yeah, we have people looking at it very, very strongly. Scientific people, intelligence people and others, and we’re going to put it all together, and I think we’re going to have a very good answer, eventually.”
Trump was later asked what gives him a high degree of confidence that the virus originated from a laboratory in China.
“I can’t tell you that. I’m not allowed to tell you that,” he said.
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