The problem for the lab-leak position is that the U.S. has never had access to the Wuhan lab and has thus been unable to reach a definitive answer for more than five years. Now that the CIA has at last come to a conclusion, not all scientists are sold on what it has reported, seeing the results as thinly scientifically sourced.

China says it's "extremely unlikely" that COVID-19​ came from a lab, after the CIA said it believed​, though with low confidence, that it did, rather than from natural transmission.

The first discoveries of people infected with the COVID-19 virus were in Wuhan. Five years after the initial lockdown was imposed, the Chinese city has not yet recovered from the crisis.

In a fresh analysis, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) said it believes that the Covid-19 virus ‘more likely’ leaked from a Chinese lab than transmitted by animals. The US intelligence agency has released the ’low confidence’ assessment under Trump-appointed CIA director John Ratcliffe,

It was on January 30, 2020, that WHO declared Covid-19 a global public health emergency. The novel coronavirus would end up killing nearly seven million people. Five years on, and with Donald Trump back in the White House,

The CIA says both a natural origin and a lab leak "remain plausible" as potential sources of covid-19, following a review of the pandemic's origins.

It was unclear the extent to which the agency has collected new intelligence on COVID-19's origins and whether that new evidence was used to formulate the latest assessment.

The Central Intelligence Agency previously said that two explanations were plausible, a lab leak or a natural source for the virus. Yet under new agency director John Ratcliffe, the CIA has changed its view, which is now in line with that of the Department of Energy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The CIA announced on Saturday that it now considers a lab leak a more likely origin for the COVID-19 pandemic than a natural transmission, although the agency maintains "low confidence" in this assessment.

The CIA now believes the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic most likely originated ... or butchering those animals at a market in Wuhan, where the first human cases appeared in late ...

The CIA says lab leak is most likely source of COVID outbreak. But there is no consensus among scientists whether it originated in nature or from an accidental leak. Not to mention the fact we're still living with COVID: The World Health Organization COVID-19 Dashboard continues to report hundreds of thousands of cases every month worldwide.

The CIA now assesses the virus that causes Covid-19 more likely originated from an accidental lab leak in China, rather than occurring naturally, according to a statement from the agency Saturday, just days after Director John Ratcliffe took the reins.