U.S. intelligence agencies weren’t able to determine whether researchers at a laboratory in Wuhan, China, who fell sick in the fall of 2019 were infected with COVID-19, which soon spread around the world, according to a declassified report released Friday.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence unveiled details about scientists at Wuhan Institute of Virology who fell ill in 2019 before the first documented COVID-19 infections, as well as coronavirus research conducted at the lab by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. However, none of the released intelligence definitively pointed to lab-related work as the cause of the pandemic, which has caused nearly 7 million deaths.
The report comes months after U.S. President Joe Biden signed a bill into law requiring declassification of intelligence related to the pandemic’s potential links to the lab.