WASHINGTON — A 90-day intelligence review into the origins of COVID-19 ordered by President Joe Biden is expected to end largely where it began, without high confidence in how the coronavirus first emerged, government officials told McClatchy.
Biden will receive a classified briefing in the last week of August on the findings of the report, which he ordered in May after learning that a large amount of unprocessed genetic data held by the U.S. intelligence community might yield new insight into how the coronavirus developed.
When the review began, intelligence agencies did not expect it to end with a “high confidence assessment” — a term that spy agencies use to describe their level of confidence in the analysis. Just weeks away from the president’s deadline, that view has not changed, according to several government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The 17 intelligence agencies conducting the review, coordinated by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, are unlikely to come to dramatically different conclusions than they had in May, although progress has been made over the past seven weeks, several officials familiar with the review said.
The data requires analysis from experts with a rare skill set of scientific knowledge, proficiency in the Chinese language and top-level security clearance.
All of the intelligence agencies agree there are two main possibilities: that COVID-19 was the result of a lab accident in Wuhan, China, or that it spread from animal to human.
Virologists and epidemiologists originally believed the pandemic virus known as SARS-CoV-2 most likely jumped naturally from an animal to humans in late 2019. But information has emerged raising the alternative as a possibility.
Three scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which conducts research on coronaviruses, were hospitalized with an illness that baffled and alarmed experts in November 2019.
The following month, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention moved to a new location in Wuhan near a wet market that experienced the first known outbreak. Videos released by Chinese state-run media that month show Chinese CDC scientists capturing bats in caves without full protective equipment.
The World Health Organization has been conducting its own review into the origins of COVID-19, but the probe has stalled, with the Chinese government refusing to provide raw data on the virus’ initial spread in Wuhan. Beijing has also rejected a proposal by WHO to expand its investigation into lab activity in Wuhan.
At the start of the U.S. review, two intelligence agencies leaned toward the animal spread theory, and one leaned toward a lab accident. All three expressed low or moderate confidence in their analyses.
The ODNI in May first acknowledged that intelligence agencies had been investigating the origins of the pandemic.
“The U.S. Intelligence Community does not know exactly where, when, or how the COVID-19 virus was transmitted initially but has coalesced around two likely scenarios: either it emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals or it was a laboratory accident,” the ODNI said in a statement after Biden announced the review.
“While two elements in the IC lean toward the former scenario and one leans more toward the latter — each with low or moderate confidence — the majority of elements do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other.”
The president had hoped that putting a deadline on the review would lend urgency to the effort and focus intelligence agencies on the task, an administration official said.
But government officials said their work would continue past the end of the review — for years, if necessary — so long as there are intelligence leads to follow.
During a visit to ODNI last month, Biden said the intelligence community would need to focus in the coming years on recruiting scientists to help stave off future pandemics.
“More people have been killed in the United States of America because of COVID than in every single major war we fought combined. Every single one,” Biden said.
“What’s next? What is intended? There’s a lot of research going on,” he added. “You’re going to have to increase your ranks with people with significant scientific capacity relative to pathogens.”
After Biden is given the COVID-19 origins report, Congress will receive classified briefings. The August congressional recess may delay those briefings, however, and in turn delay the public release of any details from the report.
The administration will release an unclassified version of the report, an official said. The president will have the final say on which pieces of intelligence should be declassified.
“We will not weigh in on substance of the 90-day review while it is still underway,” Emily Horne, spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said.
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